Someone Today
by selori
Summary: "We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today." -Stacia Tauscher When an Avenger gets hit by a de-aging ray, there is a certain way the story is supposed to go: lots of cuteness, lots of aawwww, the now-young Avenger thwarting the bad guy, and warm fuzzies all around. This is not that story. Instead, Phil Coulson is confined to SHIELD.
1. Chapter 1

**Notes:** Ceares made awesome art for the story. The master post is here: .

Thanks to the awesome InfiniteEight8 and Ralkana, betas extraordinaire. All mistakes that remain are mine.

Here's the way it works. This week's psychotic villain comes up with some _brilliant_, overcomplicated plan. Spell, potion, mad-scientist ray, freak industrial-goo accident, what have you. It's meant for the hero, of course, but psychotic villains are notoriously lousy at contingency plans, so in this particular trope, whatever-it-is inevitably lands on the plucky sidekick instead.

Because of course said Secondary Character throws him- or herself into the path of the hero's Certain Doom, taking the damage onto themselves. In a moment of breathless relief, the smoke clears and the SC is revealed to be Not Dissolved (or Vaporized, or, or, or... Whatever the Big Bad Had Planned).

The SC is now, however, a small child. Just as an example.

SC is taken back to Home Base where extensive tests, medical and scientific, as well as lots of "Awwwwww", ensue. The Analysts That Be shrug their collective shoulders and conclude that the situation will reverse itself eventually. Or not. But usually yes.

Excessive cuteness and hijinks follow, and the SC wins a special place in the hearts of all friends and coworkers. Then, in a Dramatic Climax, the SC, critically underestimated by the villain because of his or her apparent age, foils the villain's Dastardly Plot almost single-handed.

Clint knows this is how it works. He's watched TV, OK? A story has its own weight and momentum, its own set of inevitabilities; that's the nature of Narrativium (and thank you, Terry Pratchett, for putting a word to what all children know). Yes, Clint has read books, too. So not the point. The point is, there is a certain way these things should happen. The collective unconscious (yes, he's read Jung, too, give it a rest, OK?) dictates exactly how a story should run.

The point is, when the plucky sidekick or secondary character is transformed into a child? That child should be adorable, not a particularly cussedly _stubborn_ four-year-old who most likely needs a snack, a nap, and a quick (or possibly long-ish) trip to the bathroom (not necessarily in that order) to get things sorted out.

In reality, it went much more like this:

Initial setup? Pretty much as expected. The Avengers were called out to fight Geriatric Man, or whatever this joke was calling himself. He had threatened to release his armies of minions and hold the city hostage until his (as-yet unspecified) demands were met. But, as it turned out, he had made himself an army of tortoises and turkey buzzards, and they were currently terrorizing the Upper East Side. As much as a tortoise can terrorize, anyway. Clint could not make this stuff up if he tried. Tortoises. OK, yeah, so they bit hard normally, and this crazy scientist had gotten ahold of a bunch of old ones, judging by their five-foot shells, and apparently reinforced their jaws but, still. Maybe the buzzards were supposed to compensate for the tortoises' slow pace.

They were certainly keeping Clint busy. About a zillion of of them alternately circled and dive-bombed the Avengers, who were trying to keep the tortoises from taking chunks out of buildings and the New Yorkers who were doggedly trying to catch video of the fight. The average New Yorker's sense of self-preservation was said to trump all else, but that seemed to have changed in the age of YouTube.

Clint was mostly focused on the skies and the seemingly thousands of six-foot-wingspan birds. The tortoises were aggressively biting anything in their path, but, well, tortoises. They were pretty easy to avoid. His perch was up on the top of a nearby building, as usual, and also as usual, it was way too exposed for aerial defense against these numbers. Target-rich environment? Check.

That was about the time Decrepit Dude stepped up his game and pulled out his secret weapon, which was, naturally, a ray gun. Cuz, yeah, that's how these wanna-be-super villains roll. He maybe should have spent more time in target practice instead of training tortoises, though, because his aim was _awful_.

And, really? Fifth Avenue did not need this. One blast of the ray gun, and there went a townhouse, one of the newly-renovated ones, too, leaving a pile of dust and a door or two behind. SHIELD had evacuated the buildings in the area; the only people left should have been the lookie-loos. The bad-guy fired again, and there went a tree in a flutter of leaves. "Aw, tree," Clint moaned. That had been one of the nice mature ones, too. The nice thing, in the middle of this whole mess, was that the "ray" didn't punch through the first thing it hit and continue on to the things beyond. It touched the tree, it destroyed the tree, but not the building behind it. Another shot, and there went a city bus abandoned in the early moments of the fight, the resultant dust eddying in the moderate breeze. Was this guy even _targeting_ anything?

As if he'd heard Clint's thoughts, the bad guy directed the barrel of his blaster at Thor, who hovered momentarily in the clear zone above tortoises and below vultures.

"Thor! Get outta there!" Clint urged. "Everything he's hit has been at your elevation!"

Thor shoved his hammer skyward, but before he achieved more height, the old dude fired again and tagged Thor smack in the chest. Thor twitched and then shook himself.

"The merest tickle, my friend!" he responded.

"Don't get cocky, guys!" Clint warned. "Just because it only gives the demigod a thrill is no reason to let your guard down." He fired another sonic-tipped arrow at a buzzard, taking it and its ten nearest neighbors down.

"Copy that, Hawkeye," Rogers answered.

"No kidding, Arrowhead," Stark interjected. "That was no love tap that wiped out that bus."

"Arrowhead, Stark? You're slipping if that's the best you–"

"Clear the comms for required communication, Hawkeye, Iron Man," Coulson's crisp voice interrupted.

"Hey, boss," Clint called. "Evac complete?" He could see the SHIELD van at street level, just outside the perimeter.

"We think so, Hawkeye," Coulson replied. "And just in time if this guy's started disintegrating buildings."

"Copy that, sir." Clint targeted a particularly dense shoal of buzzards with a net arrow, dropping them into the middle of the street. He sighed. "Seriously? Vultures? Is this some sort of bizarre 'I'll teach you to respect 70-year-old creatures' schtick?"

Coulson sounded resigned to the inevitable continued chatter on the comms when he replied. "Barton, do you get a point for each time you ignore a direct order? Are you tallying them somewhere?"

"Sure thing, sir. I'm saving 'em up for a BMX bike — a nice purple one. And when I earn it, I'm gonna pedal it down the street with trading cards tucked in the spokes of the wheels."

"Oooh," Stark cooed, "is it the kind with the tassel-things that stream from the handlebars?"

"You'll need a basket on the front of it," Natasha snarked. She completed her improvised barricade of wrought iron tree-fences and electrified it to corral the tortoises. "A white one with huge, plastic neon daisies attached."

"Screw you guys! My bike will be awesome!" Clint defended hotly.

"What're you, four?" Stark responded, blasting a clump of vultures out of the sky.

"Whatsa matter, Stark?" Clint jibed. "Bitter because Santa Claus didn't bring you the bike you wanted for Christmas?"

"Please, Barton! Those elves of his are hacks! I engineered better vehicles as a toddler."

"I'm pretty sure last week shouldn't count, Tony," Bruce weighed in. Hulk was benched for the duration of the battle against birds and beasts. He was always a happier smashing Doombots or machines or vehicles than cute or fluffy animals. Or even vultures.

Stark's response was preempted by Coulson's voice on the comm. "People, could we stay on task, please?" Phil's tone was pinched, and Clint saw him rubbing the bridge of his nose as he surveyed the scene from the open sliding door of the logistics van. "Building-dissolving megalomaniac's army?"

"Stark, you've got a batch of tortoises heading for the perimeter at your 2 o'clock," Clint informed him. "Widow, you almost clear? This guy's firing down the street. Even he can't miss forever. Coulson, he's got a clear line of sight to the van. Pull back."

There was a click in Clint's ear as Coulson switched from the general Avengers channel to give instructions to the driver, and then a flicker of light, and then a suit jacket gently settling to the street where Coulson had been standing.

"Agent down! Assisting at the logistics vehicle!" Clint shouted even as he fired a grapple arrowhead. "I say again, agent down!" He barely heard the other Avengers' voices over the singing tone of the rappel line playing out. Behind him he heard the battle's intensity ratchet up from "lackadaisical" to "salt the earth."

"Coulson?" he called before his boots even touched the street. There was no response. "Sir?" Dreading what he would find, he approached the van at a run, clattering to a stop before a pile of Coulson's clothing.

It shifted.

Clint reached for Coulson's jacket, his terror of what he'd find underneath making the moment seem to stretch forever. The jacket moved again before he could reach it, this time falling to the side and exposing a pair of tailored wool-blend dress slacks, two perfectly polished black shoes, and a small child with enormous limpid blue eyes who was swamped in a puddle of crisp white dress shirt.

"Sir?" Clint breathed. The child shifted slightly, sleeve-draped hands pushing himself to a sitting position. "Coulson?" Clint asked again. The boy nodded, baby-fine brown hair falling further into his face. Coulson brought one of those pudgy hands up to push the unexpected hair back, and then he froze, eyes rounding, as he stared in shock at the short, dimpled fingers.

The ozone-laden breeze stirred the striped blue tie that dangled from the child's neck, reminding Clint that the battle was ongoing. If he didn't intervene, the bad guy might end up a lightning-crisped smear on the pavement, and all his intel with him. "Avengers, we may need this mad scientist alive," Clint announced. "Coulson's alive but affected by whatever this guy did. We may need his brain. Uh, attached. To a functioning mouth."

"Copy that, Hawkeye," Rogers responded.

"Alive but uncomfortable works for me," Stark added.

Clint lost track of the battle after that. He heard a sharp yell from Thor, the low-pitched whine of Iron Man's repulsors turned up to 11, and saw buzzards fall like rain from the sky, but it was all secondary. He squatted in front of mini-Coulson, forearms on his knees, blocking the line of fire from down-field. "Coulson?" he asked. "We need to get out of here, OK? Can I pick you up? Is that all right?"

Coulson nodded, and then said, "Don't forget my shoes, Barton. I like those shoes." Clint bundled Coulson up in the now-oversized, discarded clothes, snatched the shoes in his other hand, and scrambled into the van to get them both out of the direct line of fire. His gaze swept the street as he grabbed the van door to pull it closed. He saw windmilling papers and dust spiraling up from damaged buildings, but no maniacally cackling bad guy and no rampaging minions. He nodded to the driver to get them back to SHIELD.

He opened the general comm frequency again. "I've got Coulson; taking him back to medical. Meet us there?"

"Soon as we're clear, Hawkeye," Rogers answered. "Godspeed."


	2. Chapter 2

Clint held Coulson cradled against his chest as he walked the SHIELD corridors to medical. After a couple of tries, he had found a comfortable position with one arm wrapped around Coulson's small frame, with that hand supporting his legs. That left his other hand free for doors, badges, fending off the curious, and foot maintenance. Coulson's adult clothes, excepting his shirt and tie, had been exchanged for a shock blanket, and Clint had to keep tucking Coulson's tiny bare feet back under the blanket each time they wiggled loose into the brisk air of headquarters. The conflicting desires to run toward a solution and to move with the smoothest gait possible to avoid jostling the child had finally sorted themselves out. He used what he called Natasha's Predator Stalk – least extraneous movement, least noise, least jostling of possible injuries.

"It'll be OK, sir," Clint murmured into Coulson's hair, free hand patting his arm. Clint's hand now easily spanned the distance from Coulson's elbow to shoulder. "Don't worry."

Coulson raised his head from where it had been tucked under Clint's chin. "Not worried," he said. He blinked owlishly up at Clint, his familiar eyes heavy, as if with sleep. His lips twitched briefly, and Clint thought for a moment that he might smile, but then he yawned with a complete lack of self-consciousness and settled his head back into the crook of Clint's neck with a small hum. The lack of input or opinion on his situation was so un-Coulson-like that Clint nearly broke stride. Instead, he quickened his pace to the infirmary.

The first doc in medical who reached for Coulson got an "are you kidding me?" look from Clint in response. "I've got him. We'll just wait here," Clint said, striding into a windowed exam room and settling the two of them on an exam table. He kept Coulson curled against his chest, bringing his small bare feet up to rest on Clint's thigh so Coulson's knees were tight to his chest. To support that position, Clint wrapped his previously free arm in front of Coulson's shins and rested his hand on Coulson's waist.

"Who've we got that's closest to a pediatrician?" Clint asked the lanky doctor dogging his steps. "And who's on for the weird-science-of-the-day shift?"

"Uh." The man seemed nonplussed by Clint's reaction. "Martinez is newest. That means she did a rotation in peds most recently, I guess."

"Great," Clint answered. "Grab her, and send me..." Clint glanced out the exam room window to the nursing station to find a friendly face. "Send me Joanne. We're going to need some help in a bit. Who's weird stuff?"

"That's me," the doc answered, extending his hand. "Josephs."

"Hawkeye," Clint said. He shifted Coulson closer so he could take Josephs' hand and watched the doctor's medium-brown face blanch as he realized who was sitting in medical with him. "Nice to meetcha, Doc. We've got a Level 7 security, sierra-niner-niner-x-ray incident here."

At Dr. Josephs' nod, Clint continued. "Here's what we're going to do. Call Director Fury. He's going to want to be down here for this. While you're getting him, send me Martinez and Joanne. By the time you get back here, I'll have Stark on the horn to fill you in on whatever he knows about what happened today. I'm guessing about four minutes into that conversation, Stark himself will arrive."

Josephs nodded. "We'll be as ready as we can be," he joked weakly.

"This guy," Clint continued, indicating the quiet child in his arms with a tilt of his head, "is never alone. One of the Avengers, Hill, or Fury is with him at all times. Any and all medical tests and procedures will be discussed with and authorized in advance by his medical proxy. That's me."

The doctor held up one brown, fine-boned hand to request a pause. "Agent Barton," he asked, "who _is_ this?"

Clint looked somewhat sheepish. "Sorry, Doc, thought they called ahead to notify you all." He turned slightly so Dr. Josephs could meet Coulson's sleepy eyes. "Dr. Josephs, this is Agent Phil Coulson, SHIELD liaison to the Avengers."

Josephs had blanched before, but now he went positively ashen. "This is Agent Coulson?" he asked in a strangled tone. Clint gave him extra points for retaining his professional mien when most of the blood had drained from his head. The doctor took two quick steps to the door. "I'll just call Director Fury," he said, closing the door behind him.

Clint chuckled. "How 'bout that, sir," he said. "You're just a little guy, and they're still more scared of you than of having Hawkeye in medical. Who knew?" Coulson — Clint might have to start referring to him as Phil if he stayed a kid much longer — just tipped his head back to meet Clint's eyes and then snuggled back into his shoulder, and, yeah, not exactly typical SHIELD Level 7 Legendary Agent behavior.

"If you're going to stay like this much longer, sir, I'll need to change. My tac vest is gonna be he– heck on your tender skin." The only response he got was a gusty sigh that seemed too large for the lungs it came from.

"Sir, you OK?" Clint peered down at Coulson's face — all baby-fine hair, button nose, and tiny mouth (that was currently drooling slightly on his vest, but, hey, that vest had seen worse, right?) — in some concern. "You haven't said much since..." he made a rolling gesture with the hand not currently anchoring Coulson to him, "you know."

Coulson heaved another yawn. "Tired," he mumbled into Clint's chest. "Wake me for the debrief." Clint felt the tension gradually seep out of Coulson's body until every limb was limp against him. His head, tucked under Clint's chin, grew warmer and became sweaty as he fell completely asleep.

Clint should probably put Coulson down. They were in SHIELD medical after all; theoretically, it was one of the safest places to be. The resident mad scientists were quarantined down in R&D, and the walls and floors here were reinforced in case of disaster (natural or otherwise). Security was high, the ventilation could be cut off from the rest of the building and circulated on its own system, and there were backup generators for power. Clint's arms would probably start to fall asleep in the near future, compromising his ability to hold Coulson, even at his current small size. His legs would probably go first, though. Clint was used to lying on his belly for hours on end, not having something rest on his thighs.

But.

This wasn't just a matter of having Coulson's six in the field, standing over his handler until he could get his feet under him again. This was a child, a civilian. And this was somehow not Coulson but _Phil_, small and vulnerable. This was somehow a younger Clint, with all of his harrowing childhood and youth ahead of him and possibly avoidable, and somehow a tiny Natasha, who had never had a childhood at all — all his to protect.

It was irrational, and he knew it, even as he reached for his phone to call Stark. He would sit and wait, and exercise every sniper trick he had ever used to stay alert and ready until he was relieved by someone who could do the job better. That left the field pretty open, of course; with his history, probably anyone could care for a child better than him.

"Stark? What's your 20?" he asked when the call connected.

"Barton, you sweet talker with the SHIELD lingo again?" Iron Man laughed in his ear. "We're inbound. Containment took a bit longer than expected, even without Sir Senescence monologuing our ears off. How's Coulson?"

"Alive. Asleep. _Younger_," Clint replied tersely.

"Good to hear." Stark did in fact sound relieved.

"Got a doctor here ready to discuss what you learned, name of Josephs," Clint informed him. "Take it easy on him. This looks like his first freakstorm-of-the-week."

"Got it," Stark acknowledged. "Don't break the doc, until further notice."

"Call him when we're done? For now, though, I need to talk with JARVIS. Can you arrange that?"

"_Can_ I? Can _I_ have my glorious AI, who is capable of carrying on multiple conversations while piloting the armor and running the tower" Stark sounded offended on his AI's behalf, "contact you through the pedestrian means of mere cell phone circuits? Gee, let me think."

"Tony," Clint said seriously, "I need him. I need to set some things in motion for Coulson."

"JARVIS, you hear that?" Tony's tone changed instantly. "Soon as I'm done with you, you call Clint, 'K?"

"_I hear and obey, Master Stark_," JARVIS intoned, his snide comment just barely audible through Stark's call to Clint.

Stark laughed in response. "I think he's a bit peeved with one of us, Legolas. Don't worry; he'll call you in a few," he concluded. "Oh, and you'll want to see the little baby tree we're bringing in, too."

"Tree? Tony, what–" But the engineer was gone.

A knock on the exam room door heralded the arrival of Joanne, one of the RNs more likely to smile rather than cringe whenever Clint was forced into medical. Her honey-blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail at the nape of her neck, brushing the top of her scrub top, which today was patterned with poison-dart frogs. He grinned at the sight of her. Joanne had kids and now grandkids of her own, and often coaxed him to sit still in medical with a lollipop.

She shut the door behind her and began disinfecting her hands from the dispenser by the entrance. "Hey, Clint," she greeted him in the soft not-whisper that experienced parents used around sleeping kids. "Who've we got here?"

"Joanne, I believe you know Agent Coulson?" He tipped his head slightly toward the drowsing child in his lap. "In his slightly larger form?"

He blue eyes went wide with comprehension. "Oh. Wow." Yeah, Clint had chosen his victim well. Joanne could rival Coulson in unflappability. "So, weird stuff."

"Weird stuff," he agreed somberly.

"Any idea how long he'll..." she made a vague, rolling hand gesture, "be with us like this?"

"Not a clue," he assured her cheerfully, but he felt his normal grin fraying at the edges. "That's what I wanted you for. SHIELD isn't exactly child-friendly. I'm betting I can get authorized to get everything he'll need for his stay here — at least for the short term. First, though, I'm going to need your parent-brain to tell us what to get."

As if the words were a summoning charm, Clint's phone rang. "Barton," he answered.

"_Agent Barton, Mr. Stark has given me to understand that you require assistance_," JARVIS responded.

"JARVIS, thank you. It's not so much me as it's Agent Coulson," Clint responded. "He's been changed into a munchkin–" He broke off, shaking his head. "Shi– shoot, I shouldn't even joke about that. It might happen for real some day. JARVIS, he's a kid, maybe three or four?" He looked to Joanne for confirmation.

"Possibly four," she agreed. "We'll have a better guess after an exam."

"He's maybe four years old. Right now, Phil Coulson has a shirt, a tie, and a shock blanket to his name here in SHIELD HQ," Clint continued. "I need you to hook me up with whatever voodoo you do to get Stark and Pepper's requests filled so fast, and I'm going to let this lovely lady, name of Joanne, fill you in on everything a kid's going to need."

He extended the phone to Joanne, only to snatch it back at the last moment. "And JARVIS? I have a special request of my own to make, too."

Doctor Martinez arrived, her short burgundy-brown hair tucked behind her ears. "So, we think we've got an accidental de-aging?"

Clint nodded. "Crazy scientist with a ray gun. I had eyes on Coulson at the time. Unless he was teleported away and replaced with this child faster than _my_ eyes can see, this is Agent Coulson." He tipped his torso backward, angling Coulson's face toward the doc. Martinez had only a few inches on Natasha, so her eyes were about level with Coulson's, though his were closed.

"All right," she agreed. "So that'll be our working theory, and we'll angle our tests to confirm or disprove." She stepped closer to the table, looking at Coulson's slack baby face. "And we need to get started. Agent Barton, can you set him down for a bit?"

"Uh, no?" he replied tentatively. "He said he was tired and he just fell asleep. How much can you do with him like this?"

She smiled at Clint. "A lot. We can certainly get started. Let me listen to his heart first," she said, putting her stethoscope to her ears.

Coulson must have been more tired than Clint thought, because he slept through most of the examination, even after Clint laid him down on the table, and woke only when the doc insisted they needed to draw blood and called in the technician. Martinez distracted Coulson somewhat with a range of questions designed to determine his identity, memory retention, and awareness of his situation, but Coulson's phlegmatic reaction to having vial after vial after vial of blood drawn convinced Clint even further (if that was possible) that this was in fact Coulson they were dealing with and not some random four-year-old lookalike. He didn't think there was a true four-year-old child alive who wouldn't scream at least a little at having a large-gauge needle in their arm, let alone for so long. Instead, Coulson's eyes just got teary.

The phlebotomist finally left, a rainbow of rubber-capped tubes in his tray. Doctor Martinez had almost finished listing the tests they were about to run on Coulson's DNA, RNA, blood, hair, skin, spit, and _breath_ for all Clint knew when Director Fury arrived in a dramatic swirl of black leather.

"Agent Barton!" he barked.

"Sir," Clint acknowledged from his seat beside Coulson.

"Agent Coulson?" he asked.

"Sir," Coulson piped, blue eyes fixed on Fury's impassive face.

"Dammit, Phil." Fury put one hand to his forehead and proceeded to massage his scalp as if he could scrub the image of the de-aged Phil directly out of his brain.

Registering that Fury had nothing more to add at the moment, Coulson turned his attention back to Martinez. "How soon do you think we'll see results from the brain stan— _scans_, Doctor?" he asked.

Another knock at the open door heralded the arrival of lunch. Clint eyed the tray with suspicion even as he absently registered Martinez informing Fury how soon to expect the test results. It looked like some sort of stir-fry, and maybe even _pho_. It reminded Clint of when Coulson first introduced him to the dish, and suddenly the room seemed too small, with too many people breathing too little air. The prospect of watching the man who had taught Clint to use chopsticks struggle to use them himself made the situation all too real. Now that Coulson was safely being watched over by Fury, Clint excused himself to check on the Avengers' progress — and JARVIS' — and left the room at a near run.


	3. Chapter 3

"Well," Stark began expansively, clapping his hands together before his arc reactor, "we've got good news and we've got bad news."

"Bad news first," Clint instructed. Natasha, still dusty from the fight, leaned into him, pressing a gritty shoulder into his bicep.

"It's a de-aging ray for sure, and working pretty much as designed," Stark said. "No idea yet if or when it will reverse itself, and Senor Senility ain't talkin'."

"He will," Natasha promised ominously.

Clint touched his cheek to the top of her hair in thanks, then asked Stark, "We knew that already, didn't we?"

"Uh, no, actually," Bruce inserted, drawing Clint's attention. "During the fight, it seemed to be actually disintegrating things. Buildings, buses, cars..."

"Trees, yeah I got that," Clint interrupted, impatient.

"_Bazzzzt!_ Wrong answer!" Stark overrode him. "Lookie what we got here," he said, gesturing to a tiny sapling of a tree, root ball and all, sitting on a lab bench.

"Yeah, you said something about a baby– Oh. Baby tree," Clint said, catching up.

"Ding-ding-ding! Give the man a Kewpie doll!" Stark said. "With all the dust and damage and chaos, nobody noticed at first that there was still a tree there." He shrugged. "We assumed it had disintegrated like the buildings and whatever. JARVIS is working with footage of the battle to determine the original height of the tree to see if it took as many years off of _it_ as it seems to have taken off Coulson."

"Forty-five or forty-six, it looks like."

"Man, no wonder it looked like he just disappeared. He must be _tiny_!" Stark shook his head again. "Is he cute? I'll bet little baby Coulson is the most adorable thing ever."

Clint gritted his teeth at Stark's flippant attitude. "And the good news?"

"Ah, good news is that it seems to be very specific. As in, it de-aged everything the same amount, probably even Thor, though we have no way of knowing. The older fixtures from the townhouse renovations? Those are still there. Tree? Still there. Bus? Nope. But," Stark paused for effect, "the effects seem to be stable. And we have the scientist, and Steve is currently giving him the patented Captain America Disapproves look, and SHIELD is gathering all his wacky notes and research. And did I mention that it's not a disintegration ray?"

Seeing the set of Clint's jaw, Natasha tugged at his arm. "Come on, get cleaned up while you have the chance." She pushed him toward the locker room. "I'll have a few words with our crazed scientist." She shrugged delicately. "And then maybe again after he's been allowed to marinate in holding a bit."

With Fury looking after Coulson, Clint took the time to wash off the dust and grime from the battle and get his head together. Coulson wasn't in any immediate danger. SHIELD medical and science and the Avengers were working to return him to his adult state. Clint just wished the shower spray could pound that into his head with every drop of water. He changed into casual clothes and shoved his feet into half-laced combat boots before he returned to medical (and his own quick once-over). When he checked in with Dr. Martinez, she caught him up on all the other tests he'd missed — x-rays and imaging and a whole alphabet soup of scans. He quietly let himself in to Coulson's room and waited until he could get a feel for how things had progressed in his absence.

"You need me to help you to the potty, Phil?" Fury looked like he was fighting to keep a grin off his face, and Clint saw that Coulson's freezing stare was in fact a built-in feature, not one that had developed with adulthood.

"No," Coulson said unequivocally. "I don't." He rubbed his palms down his thighs to push up his overlong sleeves and gathered just enough of his button-up shirt in his hands to avoid stepping on it. Then he wrapped his (reduced) dignity around himself and walked to the small bathroom just off of the exam room, shutting the door behind him.

"Good thing there are automatic lights in those rooms," Fury muttered under his breath. "I don't think you're tall enough to reach light switches."

"Tile echoes," Phil called from the other room. "And besides, there's a step-stool."

"Sonova—" Fury cut himself off, then cursed at his reflexive need to _not curse_ in front of a child.

The toilet flushed, followed by the sound of running water in the sink for a moment before the door opened. Coulson had gathered his shirt up in front of him again, and his impossibly small, bare toes were exposed as he walked across the cold linoleum back to the exam table.

Fury rubbed his eyebrow right where it met his patch. "Coulson, you're going to have to stay here for a while. An S-99X incident makes you a security risk, and we can't have you running around outside of SHIELD until we get this resolved."

The ensuing pause wasn't just pregnant: it was three weeks overdue and about to have labor induced. Clint bit back the words he wanted to use to fill the exam room. That wasn't a _plan_, that was _incarceration_. Even with as little experience as he had with children, he knew better than to keep one in a cage.

"I am not a s'kur-ritty rist!" Coulson insisted mulishly, brows drawn down to meet at the top of the frown wrinkles on his unbroken button nose.

Fury squatted down, black coat flaring around his boots, until he could meet the blue eyes of his best friend. "Phil," he said, taking one sleeve — 34 inches, now ridiculously overlong — and pushing it up until the soft, uncallused hand was exposed, "you just told me lunch reminded you of your favorite safe house, the one in Bethesda—" The sleeve slipped back down and Fury rolled it over and over and over again until it left Phil's hand free. "—the one that's your favorite because it smells so nice because of the Vietnamese restaurant downstairs and it has such a nice view of the park." Fury repeated the process with the other sleeve. "Your _personal_ safe house, Cheese. The director of SHIELD doesn't need to know about that."

Phil's eyes grew comically large in his smooth young face, and he clasped his now-exposed hands together. "Oh," he said in his piping tenor. "Then what do we do now?"

"We'll make you as comfortable as we can. Modify some on-site housing to make it more accessible for you, less hazardous." Coulson's gaze sharpened on his. "Phil, your body is a _child's_. Forget strength and height, your gross motor skills are all shot to he— _hell_," he said emphatically, "to say nothing of fine motor. Dammit, Phil, you can't even say 'security risk' properly!"

"It's called velar fronting," Clint said from his position near the door, "and it's extremely common in young children. Most develop beyond it by about four years old."

He crossed to where Coulson was standing by the exam table. "When you consider that this is probably the first time that Coulson's mouth has made that combination of sounds at this size," Clint continued, "he's actually doing very well." He nodded to Coulson. "Hey, boss. Told you I wouldn't be gone long."

Coulson's tiny, rosebud lips turned up in a slight smile.

"'Velar fronting' Barton? Are you kidding me right now?" Fury demanded.

"You signed off on my continuing language studies, sir," Clint responded. "Did you think I wouldn't learn something about English along the way?"

Fury snorted. "That would explain your stellar grammatical skills, would it, Barton?" He nodded to Coulson and strode to the door. "I've got an agency to run, gentlemen." He fixed Clint with a parting glare. "Keep me posted, Barton. Debrief tomorrow at nine."

Clint watched him go, then turned to Coulson. "How're you doing, boss?"

"Cold," Coulson returned succinctly in his boys choir tenor.

Clint grinned at him and plunked himself down on a hard plastic visitor's chair. "I have just the fix for that, sir." He lifted a shopping bag he had retrieved from reception. "Clothes, socks, shoes..." He fished one specific item out of the sack and his smile broadened. JARVIS and Joanne had definitely come through for him to find those in such a short period of time. "And underwear," he concluded, brandishing a package of 4T Captain America-themed briefs.

Coulson's eyes lit with delight, and he made a brief, abortive movement toward the underwear, and then looked as if he couldn't understand why he'd stopped.

"C'mon sir," Clint coaxed. "You know you want to." He dangled the package before Coulson's face. "And you'll never have a better excuse." He retrieved one more item from the bag and held it up for Coulson's approval. "I got some for me for solidarity, sir," he said, holding up a pair of Captain America boxer briefs and waggling them from side to side.

"You're m'poss'ble," Coulson returned, smiling, and Clint couldn't resist smiling at the dropped syllables.

"It's one of my best features," Clint agreed, digging for more clothes to allow Coulson a moment of privacy. By the time he had unearthed a pair of sweatpants, Coulson was wearing a pint-sized pair of briefs that sported Captain America's shield (but not his likeness) and had pulled the tie and dress shirt off over his head.

Clint knew, intellectually, that children weren't just cut-down adults, but it had been a while since he'd spent time with any, much less been one. Apparently he'd started thinking of them as just uniformly squishy. Instead, four-year-old Phil had the defined muscles and visible bones that Clint now remembered as belonging to active children.

As he traded Coulson the pants for the shirt and tie, Clint had a moment to be grateful that Joanne hadn't gone the extremely-literal route and bought Coulson a miniature suit. Those round child-hands pulling a pair of dress slacks up to his ridiculously small waist might've been too much cuteness for the exam room to hold. Instead, the sweat pants were followed by a t-shirt and socks, and a pair of tennis shoes with velcro fastenings.

"I could've tied my own shoes," Coulson grumbled.

"Hey, give her a break, boss," Clint protested, tucking the adult clothes into the shopping bag. "It's almost impossible to find kids' shoes with laces nowadays." At Coulson's narrow look, Clint defended, "So I hear."

When the shoes were on Coulson's feet, Clint gave him an assessing once-over, from straight, baby-fine hair to light-up shoes, and back up to the slightly purplish fingernails. "Still cold?" At Coulson's nod, Clint opened up a zip-front sweatshirt and held it out. Once Coulson had turned his back and thrust his arms into the sleeves, Clint hooked his chin over Coulson's narrow shoulder so he could see what he was doing and quickly did up the zipper.

He turned Coulson to face him and patted his shoulder twice. "There you go."

Coulson reached out and patted Clint's shoulder, too, in what looked almost like reflex, after which his eyes rounded comically.

Clint broke the embarrassed pause with a drawn out, "Soooo," and then cast about for how to continue. "Uh, Fury's got plans for you?"

Coulson nodded solemnly. In his light voice, he said, "Ton— _con_fined to headquarters until further notice. Or until the situation can be reversed."

Yeah, he'd just heard that and he _still_ couldn't believe that SHIELD, that _Fury_, would do that to Coulson, of all people. He needed to get out of that small exam room before the urge to hit something grew any stronger. He grabbed the shopping bag and stood. "Lunch settled OK? Let's head to the gym for a bit until they get your quarters squared away."


	4. Chapter 4

Once they left SHIELD medical, the corridors became increasingly crowded, full of agents who apparently did not believe that "personal space" was a real thing, or that humans came in heights lower than five feet. Three times he was nearly separated from Coulson by an oblivious agent, and twice a junior almost _bulldozed over_ child-Coulson (seriously, did these guys never scan ahead?). Without breaking stride, Clint slipped his fingers between Coulson's arm and ribs, sliding down his arm until he could pop Coulson's tiny hand into his.

This proved less than satisfactory, though, when Coulson couldn't hold his hand in return. There was a moment of almost subconscious rearranging, and then their hands slotted into place like puzzle pieces. Clint had a moment of _deja vu_, almost as distinct as surfacing for a breath, as his hand transmitted to his hindbrain that _this_ was the way to hold a child's hand; he had simply forgotten. Vague recollections of walking with other children at the orphanage or in the foster care system teased his memory. He looked down his arm to where their hands joined, Coulson's arm at his shoulder level to compensate for the height difference. Clint's forefinger was being grasped by all four of Phil's fingers (which didn't even cover the length of his finger) and Clint's other fingers and thumb were wrapped around a very soft wrist.

Holding Coulson's hand near his thigh made them into more of a unit, forcing Clint to keep his stride shorter and preventing any more agents from practically running over Coulson. The warm grip on his forefinger pulsed, and he squeezed back without thinking of it before he realized that this had happened several times already. Apparently they had been exchanging hand-squeezes without ever making a conscious decision to do it. Maybe this, like the hand-holding position, was a built-in child-proximity feature.

When they reached the gym, Clint threw the bag aside and dropped Coulson's hand. "Race you to the end of the mats, sir?" he teased, but Coulson took him at his word and dashed across the gym, laughing. Clint was caught flat-footed by Coulson taking him up on his offer and even more so by the unrestrained joy in Phil's giggle. After a beat, Clint took off after him, chasing him down before he caught him in a flying tackle, rolling several times with the boy caged in his arms to protect him from any impact. They landed on their sides, nearly nose to nose.

Phil laughed out loud, a full belly laugh that Clint would've paid good money to hear from his adult version. "You think that was fun?" Clint asked. Hazy memories rose in the back of Clint's mind of the acrobats tumbling with their children between shows, everyone from toddlers to teens laughing delightedly. "How about another classic kid thing?"

Before Phil could answer, Clint pulled his knees up to his chest and pressed his feet against Phil's torso, surprised all over again when his feet covered Phil's abdomen from hips to ribs. He grabbed Phil's hands and rolled to his back, pressing Phil up into the air as he straightened his legs. "You ready to fly, sir?" he asked, stretching his arms up and sideways.

Phil laughed again, and Clint felt the chuckle through his toes down to his knees. "C'mon sir," he encouraged, and Phil stretched his legs out behind him and his arms out to the side in an airplane pose. Clint straightened his legs and began to fly him forward and back, forward and back, flexing his knees and waggling side to side a bit for "turbulence." Phil just continued to laugh, and Clint kept it up for minutes that felt like no time at all and like years stretching forward from his childhood, until he suddenly called "Mayday! Mayday! We're going down!" and crashed Phil sideways down onto the mats.

Phil popped up a moment later, laughing. "I have the almost unton— un_con_trollable urge to shout 'again! again!' for the foreseeable future." He straightened his sweatshirt much as he would have done for his suit and tie, smoothing his adulthood into place along with it.

Clint rolled to a cross-legged sitting position and rested his elbows on his knees. "Hey, it's a classic for a reason, sir. Everybody loves to fly."

"Still." Coulson glanced around the gym, seemingly relieved by the thin after-lunch crowd, and Clint realized that his handler hadn't scanned for other occupants before he sprinted across the floor. He felt a curling hit of something like nausea in his gut. Failing to reflexively sweep the room was distinctly un-Coulson-like.

"Let's see what you've got, sir," Clint said, springing lightly to his feet.

"What Coulson had" turned out to be a lot of memory of exercise, and no corresponding muscle memory to go along with it. He was strong for a child his age, Clint guessed, and he understood the mechanics behind tumbling or climbing, but it was like someone with a great ear for music trying to sit down and play a Beethoven sonata. The brain was willing, but the body just didn't have the coordination or experience.

The tipping point came when someone missed racking their free weights. At the resulting clang, Coulson jumped in a full-on wide-eyed child startle, flinging his arms out to the sides and leaving himself completely vulnerable. It was a far cry from the combat-ready stances his handler had taught him, Clint mused.

"Let's call it, sir," he suggested, heading for the abandoned shopping bag. "See what they've got set up for your quarters, and what results they have. Sound good?"

"OK, but we're coming back tomorrow," Coulson piped. "I think this spine could do rolls and breakfalls _forever_," he said, twisting his torso from side to side.

Clint laughed, and as Coulson came to his side for the return journey, their hands came together as if by magnetic pull.

Clint looked around in dismay. The quarters SHIELD had arranged were... practical, Clint forced himself to think. _Sterile_, his mind whispered back stubbornly. Functional, he told himself firmly, although an on-the-ball social worker would never have let a child in the system stay in such a featureless environment. SHIELD hadn't bothered with a child bed, but instead had taken out the bed frame and set the mattress on the floor. Anything with the potential to tip – bookshelf, chair, TV, dresser – had also been removed. These had been replaced with a few plastic storage cubes just one notch classier than milk crates, but Barton had a moment to be thankful that nothing in the room was actually above Coulson's eye level. Of course, there wasn't much of it. He sighed.

Coulson scanned the cell-like accommodations. "Adequate," he declared.

Clint twitched mentally. "Sir, I am currently reviewing every time you used that word in regard to assets, intel, or mission results." He froze. "You never called me 'adequate', did you?" he asked forlornly.

"Don't be ridic'lous, Barton," he replied. "You have always exceeded 'adequate' by a wide margin."

Clint grinned at the combination of childlike pronunciation and Coulson's standard phraseology. He squeezed Coulson's hand once, then dropped it and walked through the tiny room to the bathroom. His combat boots made _scrinch_ sounds on the bare, utilitarian flooring. The sink was regulation height, which meant Coulson would barely be able to touch his forearms to it, much less put his hands under the water. That was OK; one of the first things Joanne had mentioned was step-stools, and it looked like the Facilities staff had taken that to heart, tucking one beside the toilet. The shower was another matter entirely, and he surveyed the chest-height water controls sourly.

"Sir?" he called back. Coulson took two steps into his quarters and was nearly to the bathroom, waiting with an inquiring look, wispy eyebrows drawn up. "Uh, I'm going to requisition a shower chair." The eyebrows drew down minutely. "Unless you want to shower in the locker room's accessible stall?" Clint gestured to the tiny cubicle and out-of-reach fixtures.

Mouth thinning, Coulson nodded. "Chair it is," he confirmed.

They folded the results of JARVIS' initial shopping trip into the glorified milk crates. The small pile of t-shirts, pants, and underwear made the only splash of color in the grey room. Coulson's dress shirt (white) and tie (a sober blue stripe) didn't help, but were hung in the closet anyway.

"Not like you're going to need them while you're this size, sir," Clint explained while Coulson's tiny hands struggled to fold the paper bag neatly. "And when you do want 'em again, you'll be tall enough to reach."

There was another pause while each of them mentally re-iterated "when" very forcefully and did _not_ say "if" or its corresponding "and what if...?"

Clint noticed Coulson's hands smoothing down the front of the sweatshirt again, and wondered if he'd ever seen him perform that motion more than once in a day. "How about dinner, boss? It's getting around that time. We can drop by medical on our way and see if they've got anything?"

Coulson took one more glance around the small room. "Sure, Barton," he replied, heading for the door, arm hovering about eight inches from his side, at just the angle for Clint to catch his hand easily. "Let's go."

Dr. Josephs was still closeted with Stark and Banner, but the rest of medical had a few test results back.

"I'm glad to see you," Dr. Martinez told them. "I wanted to go over these results before I headed home for the night."

Coulson seemed to slip into "receiving debrief" mode, and it was weird as snake shoes to see his boss' focused look on that round face. "What do you have, Doctor?" Coulson asked, as calm as he had been hundreds of times before.

Martinez, to her credit, continued to address Coulson as a competent adult rather than directing her words to Clint. "Agent Coulson, the brain scans show a well-developed, perfectly healthy brain for a child." She paused a moment to let her words sink in. "There is a high level of activity – I would even go so far as to say an _extreme_ amount – in the areas connected with long-term memory. Language processing is extremely active, too, though not to the same extent."

"The first part makes sense, because I know I have my memories." Coulson frowned. "But language processing?"

Dr. Martinez paused for a moment, looking up as if retrieving words, then shrugged and said, "_Porque, por ejemplo, creo que hablas español_?"

"_Claro_," Coulson replied unhesitatingly.

Clint clued in. "_És a magyar is, természetesen. És sok más is_," he said.

"_Ó, látom_," Coulson replied, nodding.

She smiled at them both. "I'm not sure what that was, but I'm pretty sure you just made my point. There are more languages than usual for a four-year-old in your brain, and it makes for some Christmas-tree-like activity in the fMRI."

Then she sighed. Here came the other shoe, then. "Unfortunately, while your brain looks great, it also looks like a child's brain. The executive areas, especially the frontal lobes and the prefrontal cortex, haven't really been wired yet. Those are the areas most related to inhibition or assessing consequences." She winced. "I expect that if you haven't been already, you will soon be confined as a security risk. A brain full of data, and very little internal editor to control what gets said."

Coulson's mouth firmed into a thin little line. "Yes, Director Fury has already restricted me to headquarters."

She shook her head grimly. "I know it's required, but I'm not pleased about this. A child's brain needs activity to wire itself. Even more than muscles need activity to work properly, these connections _won't_ form unless they are _made_ to form through experience. And there are certain windows of opportunity for that wiring to happen.

"You could be back to your normal age this evening, for all we know," Martinez said, looking Phil in the eye. "Goodness knows it's what we want to happen. But we need to plan for the 'what if?', and that means taking care of your brain as it is _now_, if you get my meaning."

He frowned at her in concentration. "Then what do you recommend?"

"You're going to need some occupational therapy, similar to what we might give an agent with an injured brain." She fixed him with a serious look. "Some of it will seem very trivial to you. All of it may seem frivolous to you. I assure you it's not. Medical has made it clear to his superiors that this ongoing, daily therapy is mandatory."

Then she turned that intent stare on Clint. "And I assume that I can count on you, Agent Barton, to assist?"

Before Clint could answer, Coulson interrupted. "I assure you, Doctor, that Agent Barton will be more than willing to participate in something trivial and frivolous," he deadpanned.

"Aw, sir, that's my line!" Clint protested with a grin, pleased that Coulson's teasing seemed to have survived his transformation intact.

"If you're finished with us, Doctor?" Coulson inquired.

She nodded. "We'll set up referrals for the therapy. That should begin tomorrow."

"I don't know why she gave me that _look_," Clint grumbled as they retreated from medical. "We were already going to get food. It's not like I was planning to starve you."

Coulson's hand squeezed Clint's forefinger, twice, like a heartbeat, and Clint responded with a reflexive squeeze of Coulson's wrist. "Professional requirement to give Hawkeye a hard time?" he suggested, smiling. "You hadn't done anything else today to earn triti— _criti_cism, and I think they have a quota they have to meet whenever you've actually been on the premises."

Clint just shrugged, keeping Coulson's hand close to his thigh, and tried to remember to keep his strides short.

The dinner crowd had mostly thinned out by the time they reached the cafeteria, but SHIELD's employees worked enough irregular hours that there were still people in the serving line and seated at tables. As he dropped Coulson's hand to pull two trays from the stack, Clint realized that Coulson's eyes were almost level with the tray slide rail. He wrapped his arm under Coulson's arm, around his back to his waist, and hoisted him up onto his hip.

Then his forebrain realized what he had done.

Clint tensed, then forced himself to relax as he felt his arm pressing Coulson's chest and belly into his side, his fingers gripping too hard on his thigh. And Coulson was so much smaller and fragile and squishable. "Oh, shi— uh, shoot, sorry, sir," he stuttered, "shoulda asked before grabbing you. Just because you're smaller doesn't mean people suddenly get to move you wherever they want."

Coulson gave him a sidelong look that was about a nanometer from a full-on eyeroll. "Barton, how many times have you or I pushed each other one way or another in the field without asking permission?"

"Just wanted you to be able to see the food, sir," Clint answered sheepishly. "Not exactly life or death."

"How could I have lived without seeing that day-glo orange mac & cheese?" Coulson responded wryly.

"Want some, sir?" Clint asked, sliding his own dish of mac & cheese onto his tray.

"Yes, I think I do."

OK, so that was different. "What other things do your child-tastebuds want that older-you wouldn't?" Coulson continued to select foods that Clint had never seen him eat, including the canned fruit cocktail, complete with violently red maraschino cherries.

"Y'know, boss," Clint said as they walked to a table, "if you're like this for any length of time? We should invest in one of those kid backpacks. The kind where the kid rides around on the adult's back?" At Coulson's quirked eyebrow — and that _had_ to be a built-in feature; no way was that muscle memory — Clint continued. "We could be like the MasterBlaster of SHIELD. You could be the brains, and I could be your brawn."

Coulson laughed lightly as they sat at the table, his feet swinging a foot off the floor. "With Fury as Mad Max? And who as Tina Turner?"

Clint gave a low whistle. "Tina Turner in a chainmail dress. Now that was fodder for a thousand adolescent fantasies. That woman has legs for _days_."

Instead of agreeing, Coulson looked thoughtfully down at his vanilla pudding. "Interesting," he said slowly. "I can remember thinking that, and I don't disagree, but it all seems," he paused, searching for the word, "distant, now."

The conversational pause was interrupted by Stark plunking himself down on the narrow slice of bench between Clint and the rest of the room. "Scoot over, Hawkguy," he demanded, pressing his sneakers into the floor so he could shove Clint with his hip. Clint went, and Stark ended facing Coulson directly. Natasha sank gracefully to a seat beside Coulson, opposite Clint.

"I was right! Tiny Coulson is adorable!" Stark crowed. He pulled out his StarkPhone. "I've got to get a picture of this."

"No!" the three SHIELD agents immediately snapped.

Tony pointed the phone at Coulson's face. "It'll be fine. It's me," he insisted. "OK, and maybe Pepper. Pepper is going to love this!"

"Tony, no!" Clint repeated.

In a blink, Natasha's hand covered the lens of the phone, holding Tony's fingers tightly against its frame. "It's not negotiable, Stark," she said in deceptively smooth tones. "You will not take unauthorized pictures of a minor, or of a SHIELD agent," she continued, her voice and grip both growing progressively harder, "or of a human being who has been altered against their will."

Tony's eyes rounded comically. "Right. Solid choice," he agreed, nodding. "Also, ow? And can I have my hand back?"

Natasha released his hand and he drew it back, flexing it absently. "You know what isn't cute?" he said as if the intervening conflict hadn't happened. "Agent's quarters." He gave the word a sardonic twist. "If you can even call them that." He shuddered. "It's like something out of Oliver Twist. When we heard you were in the cafeteria, I expected Coulson to be in the food line with his bowl saying, 'Please sir, I'd like some more square footage.'" He shook his head. "Or furniture. Or color. Or anything, really."

"We have some stuff coming," Clint said. "Some more clothes and things."

"SHIELD does not decorate its holding rooms for children, Stark," Coulson put in, "though I can certainly understand your interest." Clint mentally added "snarking at Stark" to the list of behaviors that seemed to have carried over into Coulson's de-aged state.

"Why, Agent," Stark responded melodramatically, "are you calling me a child? I'm hurt. Or touched." He tried to grab a roll off Barton's plate. Clint fended him off with a growl and a menacingly angled fork. "Or–"

"Or touched in the head," Clint muttered, forking up another bite of mac & cheese.

"And can I just say," Tony continued, changing tacks. "That voice? Adorable!" Clint narrowed his eyes at Stark, and then returned to his meal. It was probably too much to ask Tony to take this seriously. From what Clint knew, Tony had never had much of a childhood himself. From the time he was four, if SHIELD's records were to be believed, he had been treated either as a tiny adult inventor or as an afterthought, with no allowance made for a child's needs. It had resulted in a strange combination of self-sufficient independence and needing both Pepper and JARVIS to remind him to eat and sleep.

Coulson sighed deeply, a far too long-suffering sound for such a small frame, and set his fork down. Clint was beginning to recognize the signs of child-Coulson accessing adult-Coulson's memories and behavior patterns. "Do you have anything to report, Stark? Agent Romanov?"

Natasha shook her head, bright red hair brushing her shoulders. "Nothing as yet, sir. He's keeping his cards pretty close to the vest."

"And his notes are..." Stark rolled his eyes. "Shall we say 'lacking'? I don't know why they call these guys mad _scientists_ anyway. Where's the testing? Where are the control samples? Where's the peer review? Is this what they mean when they say science education is lacking in this country? Because I could've sworn that fourth graders learned the scientific method. But these bozos—" He threw his hands in the air.

"Dr. Banner remained behind in the lab to see if he could make any sense of things," Natasha said. "Thor and Captain Rogers are on-call responders for Avengers business. I'll take over from Barton for night watch." Clint gave her a sidelong look, because Natasha had never been what he might've called "good with children." He thought for a moment. Or "in the same room with children", really.

"Agent Romanov, that really isn't nece–"

"Sir, Agent Barton will need the rest," she interrupted, effectively derailing the conversation. She turned to look Clint in the eye. "We'll see you for breakfast?"

Well, if she was determined, he would agree. At Clint's nod, she turned back to Coulson. "I have something for you, sir," she said, placing a small black item on the table.

Coulson looked from it to her serene expression, and then picked it up. He opened the black leather wrap and pulled out a small push knife. His small fingers fit into the loop, the central bar running between his third and fourth fingers, and the base of the loop fit snugly into his palm. In his fist, the blade extended only slightly further than his fingers would have. He punched experimentally with it, eyes rounding. "It's lovely, Natasha," he said with a delighted grin. "Thank you."

She acknowledged his thanks with a single nod. Clint grinned. He would've hugged her, if he was certain he wouldn't lose a finger or two in the process. Clint had gotten child-sized Coulson food and clothes, but Natasha had armed him. Because of course she had. Clint shook his head.

Stark goggled. "Please. Please, please, please can I take a picture of that? It's sharp, isn't it?" Natasha raised a single eyebrow. "Right, it's from you, of course it's sharp. That is so, so..." He spread his hands in front of his chest. "That's like a Black Widow version of a teddy bear, right there. Or a SHIELD security blanket."

"I don't know about you, Stark," Clint put in, grinning, "but having Coulson armed again makes me feel all kinds of secure."

Natasha ignored them both. "You can't handle the recoil of a firearm right now, and I knew that none of your other weapons would fit your hands." She stood. "Ready, sir?"

Coulson sheathed the knife and joined her, walking close to her side but not touching, and they left the cafeteria discussing draw and carrying options.


	5. Chapter 5

When he reached his apartment at Avengers Tower, Clint nearly collapsed against the door as he closed it behind him. This had all the earmarks of a situation about to go spectacularly down the toilet. It might not. It was _just_ possible that, for once, the powers that be would get it right and not punish a highly-valued agent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But considering what Fury had done to Coulson the _last_ time the man had given his all for SHIELD, Clint was deeply distrustful.

"JARVIS, I have a lot to ask of you, right now, and I need you fully on board." He looked up at one of the AI's cameras. "I promise to give you a good reason. Several good reasons, in fact."

"_Sir_?"

Clint grinned despite his exhaustion. He'd used that very same "sir" himself, many times, indicating attentiveness and not even the least little bit of agreement.

"First off, we're going to have a short discussion about 'plausible deniability' and how it is Tony Stark's friend, and yours." He paused for a moment. "And, JARVIS, if at the end of this conversation, you find that you can't in good conscience help me, I'm going to need you to 'forget' I ever asked. If I haven't asked you to violate any laws or anyone's trust or to plan anything nefarious, can you do that?"

"_I believe that I can, sir, in the interests of privacy and security_."

"Hot damn." Clint all but rubbed his hands together in glee as he began to explain the situation. He was making arrangements that he hoped – desperately – would prove unnecessary. But if he did finally need to make use of them, they would have to be secure. More than that, they would have to _have been_ secure during their creation and acquisition. In essence, he would be asking JARVIS to self-hypnotize to forget any incriminating evidence.

"So, please open a new project folder, or file, or whatever, and segregate it from everything else... I've got a house. I need you to verify that the city hasn't installed CCTV yet and has no plans to do so. Then I need records, going back at least six years," Clint said. "I need bulletproof identities and a paper trail for three people: husband, wife, and child for that same time period, wife died two months ago, child is now four years old.

"I need a private preschool in the general vicinity, one with a great record. Once we find one and the employees have passed background checks, I need the husband alias to begin making inquiries.

"And JARVIS, you can't tell anyone about this. Put it on a secure server, delete the history of your actions, of my request, of my request for you to delete the request, the whole enchilada."

"_Sir, I regret that–_"

"No, don't give me that. You can do this, and I'm going to let you explain to yourself why you can."

"_And how would I do that, sir_?"

"JARVIS, I want you to review every time Agent Phil Coulson has been instrumental in saving Stark. Or Pepper. Or the world." Barton continued, his voice tightening.

"_Sir, I hardly think that—_"

Clint overrode him. "Did Pepper ever tell you how she got out of Stark Industries' headquarters and away from Obadiah Stane?" he demanded. "Did Stark or Pepper tell you who walked her through the front door, who provided the potential witness or collateral damage that Stane wasn't yet willing to risk?"

"_Reviewing security footage now, sir_."

"Or who got her back _in_ to the building so she could be Stark's distraction and ace in the hole?

"I know you're still in SHIELD," Clint continued. "You never leave somewhere Stark puts you. So I want you to review the footage of Coulson now as a four-year-old in SHIELD custody." Clint paused. "And as you're looking over that barren barracks room they've 'converted' for a child, I'd like to point out to you that every item that's actually appropriate for a child's developing brain or growing body was acquired by you, me, and Joanne. SHIELD was perfectly content to stick him in a four-by-six room one step up from a detention cell in nothing more than a shirt and a shock blanket and leave it at that."

Clint didn't know how JARVIS could make that thoughtful hum without vocal cords, but he did it well. "_I see, sir_."

"There's a possibility that SHIELD could get it right. That once, just once, the monolithic bureaucracy might understand that a child is not a cut-down adult, or that Phil Coulson, of all people, maybe deserves a little more than to be stuck in a cell for the rest of his life for doing his job. If that happens," Clint continued, "no one will be happier than me to scrap all these plans. I'll buy you a bouquet of fiber-optic wiring and a bottle of solar power and we'll celebrate wiping out the data together.

"But until that happens, JARVIS? I want you to review the outcomes of children raised in former Soviet-bloc orphanages."

The beep of his alarm drew Clint's gaze away from the cityscape he'd been contemplating for fifteen minutes. He turned it off and finished his coffee before heading to the door of his apartment. His discussion with JARVIS the night before had gone much better than he had anticipated. Who knew that an AI could be so reasonable? Especially when his creator was definitely _not_.

"JARVIS, any progress on our project?"

"_Indeed, sir. The destination city is still appropriate for your needs, and I have begun the process of acquiring hardcopy documentation of the electronic records created last night_."

"Awesome, JARVIS. You're a peach." But if there was any justice in the world, there would never be call to use what JARVIS was creating. "Let me know if anything changes, alright?"

"_Certainly_." There was a pause where Clint could swear the AI was clearing its throat uncomfortably. "_Agent Barton, perhaps you would be interested in viewing Agent Coulson's assigned quarters before you depart for SHIELD_?"

Yeah, of course SHIELD had surveillance in Coulson's quarters; he'd known it last night when he'd told JARVIS to access the cameras. Clint had been disappointed when he'd first realized it — he had hoped that SHIELD would have better respect for its agents, especially one as senior and valued as Coulson — but he wasn't surprised. He'd have destroyed the monitors, but he knew SHIELD would only replace them. The _no_ he intended to say to JARVIS was halfway out before his thoughts caught up with him. JARVIS wouldn't have made the suggestion if there wasn't a reason. "Sure, JARVIS."

Coulson's barren quarters were still nearly dark, but there was enough light to make out the shape of a child curled on the mattress on the floor, and a not much larger shape curved around him. Natasha had one arm outstretched under Coulson's neck and the other draped loosely over his waist, the two of them curled around each other like, like two woodshavings and shut _up_ he's watched "The Yankee Woodcarver", OK? Sometimes you're stuck in a safe house and that's the only thing to watch, all right?

But the point is, they were curled up like two things that were always meant to be wrapped around each other and it was both the cutest and the most terrifying thing he had ever seen because Natasha didn't _do_ that and, really? Neither did Coulson, at least not that Clint had ever known about, and he would pay good money to have seen the progression from Natasha being on watch to Natasha spooned up around a pint-sized version of their handler. If he had to guess, he'd say that there had been some weapons-grade puppy eyes on Coulson's part. He had seen the potential for that damage yesterday, and was glad to have been spared so far.

"JARVIS," he began, then raised his voice as he realized he had unwittingly whispered. "Do you have any way to prevent that footage from being copied by anyone else?"

The AI _hmmmm'd_ briefly. "_Agent Barton, it seems that those security files have developed a transcription error. The resolution is low, and they will be remarkably difficult to reproduce. SHIELD should perhaps look into this deficiency in their hardware_."

"I'll put it on my to-do list," Clint replied.

Clint knocked gently on Coulson's door. "Coulson?" he called. "Tasha?" At Coulson's treble invitation, he opened the door to see Natasha just stowing away her firearm, but barely unwound from Coulson. Even in the low light Clint could see the slight flush on her cheeks that was more than just-woken-from-sleep warmth.

It was far from the first time that any of them had shared a bed, in one circumstance or another, or in some combination, but Natasha had been very definite that she intended to _keep watch_. Clint couldn't miss the opportunity to rib his partner. "Coulson, how did you coax Natasha into bed?" he teased.

"He was cold," Natasha said, in that deliberately not-defensive tone that meant she was embarrassed by displaying humanity.

"I was cold," Phil chimed in. "And Natasha's warm. And soft."

Natasha's eyes rounded at his statement, and she drew in a breath sharply. "I think he means I'm softer than you." She quirked an eyebrow and gave a quick shoulder-lift and head-tilt combo as she conceded the point. "A woman being as ripped as you is memorable. I maintain a more female-average body fat percentage to facilitate my undercover work. It helps me remain unobtrusive."

Coulson excused himself and shuffled to the bathroom, and Clint had another moment to mentally thank Joanne for _not_ providing zip-up jammies.

"Natasha, you OK?" Clint asked, which was a stupid question because, hello, "OK" had clearly left the building some time ago, but maybe she wanted to talk about it anyway.

She nodded, but still seemed a bit shaken. "I don't interact with children. You know that."

"I do."

"He's Coulson. He's our Coulson, with his thoughts and his memories. But he's a child, with a child's reactions," she said. "But he isn't." She paused again. "I don't... I can't..." She took a deep breath. "Given the choice, I would never share a bed with a child, comfort a child. But I would with Coulson. Except our Coulson would never need it."

There was another pause.

"But he was cold. And if it was anyone else, or an actual child, I would have said he was scared." She blew out a breath in a sigh. "It would be easier if he was just one or the other," she finished quietly.

There was a yelp from the minuscule bathroom. Natasha leaped up from the mattress, and Clint took two steps toward the bath before he heard, "Spicy!" and saw Coulson frantically trying to rinse the toothpaste out of his mouth.

"Sir?" Clint called, torn between amusement and alarm.

"The toothpaste!" Coulson rinsed and spat, and rinsed and spat again. "Has mint toothpaste always been so strong?"

Clint looked from the offending tube of Crest to Natasha, who just shrugged. "He was tired last night. I didn't think one night of not brushing his teeth would be a disaster."

He spread his hands. "You gotta set patterns with kids, Tasha, and oh man who am I to be talking about taking care of kids?" He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. Yeah, like he had a clue how to take care of a child.

He turned back to Coulson who had gotten almost all of the offending foam off his lips. That issue was something he could actually deal with. "We'll get you something milder today, sir," Clint said. Seeing how enormous the adult-size toothbrush looked in Coulson's hand, he continued, "And we'll get a smaller toothbrush, too."


	6. Chapter 6

As they left the cramped quarters, Coulson's hand lifted from his side, as if without conscious thought, into the perfect position for Clint to grasp it. And really, what was that about? Some sort of muscle memory from forty-five years ago? The only thing odder was how Clint's hand gravitated to Coulson's. Natasha fell into step on Coulson's other side, and they bracketed him between them, clearing a path down the halls to the cafeteria.

Pancakes. The cafeteria had pancakes, and it was more comforting than Clint could have expected to see Coulson request a stack of pancakes to eat along with what looked like an excessive amount of bacon for a child. Tempted as he was, Clint could not bring himself to steal bacon from a child's plate, and so contented himself with sniping bits of Natasha's muffin.

Still, it was difficult to watch Coulson struggle to manipulate the knife to butter the pancakes, or to pour the syrup on target. When he managed to cut the pancakes, the bites were too large for his mouth, and he had to cut them again.

After watching this process twice, Clint offered, "Sir? May I?" and gestured to the fork. "Nothing we haven't done before when someone's hands aren't working like they want."

Coulson's mouth pressed into a flatter line, but after a moment he nodded and pushed the plate closer to Clint.

"But if you try to feed them to me, and so help me if I hear a single airplane or 'choo-choo' noise..." He let the ultimatum hang in the air until Clint nodded.

"Duly noted, sir."

The debrief was a disaster. Seriously, did no one remember that they were preparing for a _child_ to sit in on the meeting? Coulson needed a hand up to even get into one of the chairs without it sliding out from under him. Once he had gotten himself settled, his nose was almost level with the table. Someone had arranged for coffee, but Clint had serious doubts about the wisdom of caffeinating a pint-sized Coulson. He wasn't quite sure how he'd done it, but he must have looked a combination of frustrated, worried, and urgent, because Steve volunteered to get a hot cocoa from the nearest break room.

Coulson listened to the first part of the debrief calmly, occasionally adding an aside about the view from the logistics van, but he kept shifting from sitting on his folded up legs (pins and needles!) to kneeling up so he was waist-high to the table to sitting on his heels again. In his defense, it was one of the dullest debriefings Clint could remember, despite having a result-of-the-battle sitting in the seat next to him. Eventually Clint took pity on him and beckoned him over to his lap. There was a pause while Coulson seemed to consider the relative merits of the shift — comfort versus dignity — and Stark's eyebrows made a bid to climb all the way into his hairline.

Fury broke the silence, dropping his forehead into his palm and saying, "Just _go_, alright, Coulson? Not sure we can continue this debrief with you popping up like a Jack-in-the-box every two minutes."

There was relative calm and focus for a bit as they finished the recap of the battle and Coulson's transformation. Clint had been right in his assessment of the Avengers yesterday; Coulson getting tagged by the ray gun had been the beginning of the end for the villain du jour. The Avengers team had taken that attack extremely personally.

Coulson shifted once more in Clint's lap, and leaned back to whisper in Clint's ear, "I'm bored." Of course, it was a kid whisper, so it carried the length of the conference table to where Fury sat glowering at the interruption.

Clint pulled out his Starkphone, unlocked it, and opened an app. "Here, Coulson," he said as he slid it into Phil's hand. "Work on some practical application of physics and ballistics for a minute." As a distraction technique for only Coulson, it might have worked. The recap of the intelligence gathered from the bad guy, his minions, and his lair continued for another few minutes until Bruce was interrupted by the sound of sniggering green pigs.

"Gentlemen," Fury began in freezing tones, "if this SHIELD debrief is interfering with your game..."

Clint winced at Fury's glare, which seemed to have passed over Coulson's small head with zero impact, judging by the way he continued to slingshot the colorful birds at the structures. "Sorry, sir," he said, chastened. "But really, what is there left to say? Geriatric Man was unhappy with the nation's treatment of the elderly, and finally snapped when his research funding was pulled? Yeah, like that hasn't happened a dozen times before."

"These grant committees should start screening for psychological issues at least as much as potential real-world and industry applications," Tony grumbled.

"I thought we _wanted_ more people in the sciences?" Bruce said under his breath.

"That would prevent _you_ from ever receiving funding, Stark," Natasha said.

Tony crossed his arms with a smug grin. "Yeah, no, the Tony Stark/Iron Man research team comes complete with its own finances."

Coulson whispered in Clint's ear, much quieter this time. "Director, can we be done?" Clint asked. "I think Coulson has an appointment or two with medical."

There was another pause, broken by Tony when he said, "I can't decide if we're waiting for Barton to be struck by lightning from above, or if we're waiting for Thor to do it."

Thor seemed to understand the implication, because he said, "Truly, friend, I have never seen you rush to the lair to the healers."

"Coulson's got some occupational therapy thingy to get set up today."

Fury sighed and closed the folder in front of him. "Fine. But Barton, you're on protection detail until further notice."

"You bet, sir." Clint slid Coulson down from his lap so he could stand on the floor, then gathered his things and stood as well. He'd had grave doubts about giving Coulson an entire Venti-sized hot cocoa, and he was now being proven right. He needed to hurry Coulson to a men's room, stat.

Shi– shoot, the closest urinal at child height was "nowhere on SHIELD premises." Time for a quick trip back to Coulson's quarters before they hit up medical.

Before they could even leave Coulson's quarters, Clint got a call from Dr. Martinez wanting to confirm that they were available for the occupational therapist. Clint ended the call and sat down cross-legged on Coulson's mattress. "So. Looks like you're getting a visit from a kid-brain therapist. You ready for this?"

"I guess," Phil said. He mimicked Clint's pose, additionally resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands.

"Hey, boss." Clint leaned over and bumped his shoulder into Coulson's. Or attempted to. With the height difference it turned into more of an elbow to the shoulder. Clint said. "It'll be OK, sir. Don't worry."

"I'm not worrying," Coulson said, all injured dignity. "I'm _wondering_," he distinguished. "What if they want to make me talk about my childhood? Or draw pictures? Or... build sand castles or something?"

"Well, whatever they want, it won't be worse than psych evals, right?"

Yeah, right. What did he know? As if his words had jinxed them, the therapist arrived with a bag over each shoulder and two additional tubs of materials. She introduced herself as Nancy, settled herself on the floor cross-legged under her ankle-length skirt, and began an appointment that went on and on and on and on.

It was fine when she wanted to roll a ball across the floor and have Coulson roll it back, or toss it and have him catch. He couldn't, and wasn't _that_ a kick in the pants for the man who caught projectiles like it was his _job_? Checking out writing skills? Coulson's beautiful copperplate penmanship (Clint had looked it up, OK?) had degenerated into jagged lines, but at least he knew his letters, numbers, and more math than the therapist seemed equipped to test for.

Then she started testing his senses, and then his "higher executive functions" (and Clint was going to have to do _so much research_ to be of any use with all of this), and then his memory, and then, did she seriously just give him a cracker and ask him to swallow? And then his attention span, and then his emotional control and by then Clint was pretty much done, himself, finding his own attention wandering and his nerves frayed, but he still caught the over-shiny look in Coulson's eyes before the therapist did.

"We're done here, right?" he said, placing a hand on Coulson's shoulder. It wasn't a question so much as an opportunity for the therapist to agree and get the he– heck out of Coulson's room before she made him cry and Clint had to reinforce that that was an unacceptable outcome.

"Yes, definitely," Nancy replied. She flipped her graying braid back over her shoulder and deliberately turned her attention to Coulson. "I'll need to write up the results of the assessment formally, of course, but I am extremely impressed by the amount of information you have retained. My initial impression is that your physical development is typical for a four-year-old; we'll need to calculate the results to get a more precise estimate."

Then she shook her head. "Agent Coulson, this also means that your emotions, attention span, sensitivities, and ability to think logically and reason out consequences are appropriate to your physical age." She looked at him sympathetically and, telegraphing her intention, reached out and took his hand in hers. "You will find it difficult to think in your old patterns and with your old rapidity. This will probably frustrate you, and you will find you have a low tolerance for that frustration. You may cry. You may want to shout and scream and throw things, and you may find yourself doing all this before you've made a conscious decision to do so."

She squeezed his hand. "You may find yourself reaching out for others more than you used to — wanting to be held or touched or hugged. Your adult self may find this embarrassing, but I assure you it is completely healthy, normal, and necessary for your four-year-old self." As if her words had released him, Phil nodded and flung himself from his seated position into her lap. Her arms came around him gently and she rocked him from side to side.

"That has been so _weird_," he said, his voice muffled by her sweater.

OK, Clint might agree that Coulson had been acting a little like a kid, and maybe a little touchy-feely, but really? Compared to Coulson throwing himself into the arms of a near stranger for comfort? Yeah, not even in the same zip code.

"It's all right. This is normal," she soothed. "The testing is designed to find the edges of your emotional control as much as anything else." She rubbed her hand soothingly up and down his back. "It's going to leave you feeling like a wrung-out dishrag, I'm afraid."

Clint nearly growled at that. "Was that entirely necessary? And couldn't you have warned us?"

She shook her head and looked him in the eye, apologetic but fearless. "Would have invalidated the results." Giving Coulson one last hug, she set him back on the floor in front of her.

"I can leave a few of these things here for you to work with," she said, setting aside a few puzzles, some books, a squishable, bumpy ball, and a bag of sparkly goop. "I would recommend that you also stay close to your team. You've bonded with them, and your child-instincts will be to seek tactile reassurance from them." She gave Phil an intent look. "Don't fight that."

He nodded solemnly, and Clint hoped desperately that the Avengers wouldn't be called out for a while. He reached out and tentatively patted Coulson's shoulder. He was relieved when Phil leaned into the touch, then stunned when he crawled into Clint's lap. But that was nothing to the reflexive kiss Clint dropped on Phil's hair a moment later.

Clint tensed, inadvertently tightening his arms around Coulson, but Phil just snuggled deeper into his lap. After a moment Clint relaxed again, realizing he hadn't overstepped. Nancy smiled at him, blue eyes crinkling at the edges. "You're doing fine, Agent Barton," she assured him. "You have good instincts, too."

Right, like she had any clue that the only parenting he'd seen up-close and personal was, to put it mildly, dysfunctional? He distrusted all of his knee-jerk responses when it came to kids, because he'd so rarely seen first-hand examples of anything other than yelling and mocking and hitting.

"And Agent Coulson, don't fight your new physiology," Nancy continued. "This assessment is grueling, by design. I recommend that you two get some lunch and then a nap." She smiled at both of them. "In fact, I'll have lunch sent up here. I'll work up these results and get back to you within the week."

Clint set the trays from lunch outside Coulson's door and shut it behind him, rolling his shoulders to stretch out the muscles.

"How're you doing, sir?" he asked. "I'm beat."

Coulson looked up from his seat on the mattress and yawned expansively.

"Got it, boss." Clint sat and removed Phil's shoes, and Coulson tipped over onto the mattress. Clint pulled the thin, SHIELD-issue blanket over him and then moved to stand up.

Coulson yawned again. "Aren't you tired, too?" he asked.

And, yes, he definitely was. Whether it was the stress of the last few days or the evaluation (or the hint Nancy had dropped about a nap), or the constant fear that he was just going to _snap_ and channel his father, or just the fact that he was between missions at HQ, Clint could definitely see his way clear to taking a short nap.

"Scoot over, sir," he said, and wrapped himself, yawning, around a half-asleep Coulson.


	7. Chapter 7

He was wrestling with Natasha and finally had her pinned. Or so he thought, until she poked her pinkie finger into the hollow of his cheek. "Barton," she said. "Let me up."

"No way, Tasha," he replied, grinning into her warm hair. "Not until you give. For real."

She poked his cheek again, hard enough to hurt. "I'm serious. Let me up. I need to pee."

OK, that was _not_ how Natasha cried uncle, and since when had she started using Coulson's shampoo to wash her hair?

"Barton," she said again, her voice higher this time. "I can't get loose. Let me go."

Clint startled awake, suddenly realizing that he had Coulson snugged close to his chest in a grip tight enough to rival an anaconda's. Coulson had reached his hand over his shoulder to poke Clint's face with a chubby forefinger. "Shoot, sir, I'm sorry," he said, opening his arms so Coulson could squirm free.

Coulson tossed him a quick smile over his shoulder as he hurried to the bathroom. Clint sat up and rubbed his face, yawning, as he checked the time.

"Sir?" he called over the sound of the flushing toilet. "There's still some hours left in the afternoon. Any ideas?"

There was no response while Coulson washed his hands, and then he walked back into the room, still drying his hands on a towel that was longer than he was tall. He was also frowning.

"Maybe we could get some things from my place? There are a few books I wouldn't mind finishing or re-reading while I'm on enforced stand-down." Clint winced, and Coulson correctly interpreted it because he said, "Right. Confined to headquarters." He sighed. "Maybe we can ask Stark to send some things over. Who's on watch tonight?"

"Uh, I don't know," Clint confessed. "We should've talked about it at the briefing but..." He spread his hands, not adding "nature called."

"Maybe you should see what the others have come up with," Coulson suggested.

Clint pulled out his phone to obey the implied order, but paused. "Did you want to do this, sir?" he asked.

"You go ahead Barton," he said calmly. "They haven't returned my phone to me, yet."

And Clint hadn't even noticed. That was -1 for Hawkeye for today's observation scores. He tightened his grip on the phone as anger at Coulson's treatment flared in his chest. "Sonova—" Clint swallowed the rest of the swear.

"It's all right, Barton," Coulson said, amused. "I'm not _actually_ four, you know. I have heard those words before."

"You say that now," Clint muttered. "It's all fun and games until someone hears the four-year-old cuss a blue streak and calls Child Protective Services." He dialed Natasha. "Anyway, sir, I have an idea for today."

Understandably, in light of the morning's confessions, Natasha begged off any further night watches, and Clint couldn't blame her. Sure, Tasha could play the _role_ of doting mother/aunt/other adult, but putting on that deep cover mask in order to care for Coulson? It made Clint's skin itch just to think about it.

Coulson himself vetoed Captain Rogers, as much for his super strength as for his discomfort at being a child under his childhood hero's care. They agreed together that Thor might not be an ideal guardian figure for an Earth child. Clint might be willing to trust Banner with child-Coulson, but there was no way that Bruce would trust himself to guard a child, and they decided together that it would be best not to ask. That just left—

"No," Coulson said firmly, adult persona solidly in place. "I will not have a man who cannot remember to feed and water himself as my 'guardian', no matter for how short a time."

"Looks like you're stuck with me, then, sir," Clint said cheerfully. "I'll see about getting some of my things sent over along with your books, OK?"

When Coulson nodded, Clint rose to his feet, creaking a bit. "Ready for a bit of fun, boss?"

Clint's idea of fun, in this case, was the SHIELD on-site day care for children of employees. Initially, Coulson was one of the older children there, and he kept close to Clint's side. After only a bit, though, there was an influx of children as schools let out for the day. Coulson was drawn into a game of four-square. Then there was free coloring time. And then story time.

Clint hung back initially, wanting Phil to be able to mix with the other children without a looming adult presence. By the time story time rolled around, though, he was more than willing to sit when Phil sought him out and pulled him by the hand to sit on the carpet with the other children.

Clint sat down cross-legged and Phil sat immediately in front of him. After a few minutes, though, Phil scooted back into Clint's lap and leaned back on his chest with a contented sigh. Clint rested his chin on Phil's head and marveled again at just how small Phil was now. When all the children began shouting "No!" to the silly pigeon in the book, Phil chimed in. The thrumming of his yells and laughter transferred directly to Clint's chest, and for a moment he found it hard to breathe. When the picture book was finished, the children all scrambled up and over to new playthings — puzzles, a sand table, building materials, and even dress-up clothes. Phil went running with them, and Clint had a moment to wonder what "Agent Coulson" thought of his child self going native.

When the SHIELD parents started filtering in to pick up their children, Clint sought Coulson out. "You about ready to call it, sir?"

Coulson nodded, hesitated, and then turned back to the day care worker, tugging on her sleeve to get her attention. When she crouched down to meet his eyes, he whispered his question urgently in her ear. Clint wasn't sure what happened next, but he was pretty sure that enormous, liquid blue puppy-eyes were deployed, because she gave him a book from the day care's collection without a quibble. She smiled as she handed him the large picture book, similar to the one she had read earlier, and patted his arm gently. He tucked the book under his arm and turned back to Clint, reaching his other hand up to be held.

Clint nodded approvingly. "Way to commandeer civilian assets, sir," he teased as they walked back to Coulson's quarters. "And may I just say, it was an honor to watch a senior agent exercise his skills in blending so seamlessly with the locals." Where adult-Coulson's lips might have turned up in a faint smile, Coulson's child-self grinned up at Clint openly, completely unselfconscious. Clint grinned back, a wave of fondness rising through his chest, and realized he was squeezing Coulson's hand rhythmically, like a heartbeat.

"So, what did you think, boss? How was your walk on the kid side?"

"It was good," Coulson returned. "Easier than I had expected. And," he held up the book, "I got you some homework so you can practice your child-interaction skills."

Clint looked askance at the thin, blue book. "_Don't let the Pigeon Stay Up Late_, sir?"

"It'll be good for you. You can practice your acting skills with the different voices." And, yeah, that was a crock and a half, but if Coulson was up for story time, Clint was all for it, too. "Maybe next time I can get _Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog_ and get Sitwell to read it to me," Coulson deadpanned.

"That might take a direct order from Fury, sir," Clint replied.

"I think I can make him see it my way," Coulson assured him. "The director owes me a few."

They stored the book in Coulson's quarters, the royal blue cover one of the few splashes of color in the dreary room. Clint's purple duffel bag made another, and Phil's books made one more. It still wasn't enough to cut the overwhelming gray theme, however.

"Glad your books made it, at least, sir," Clint said with deliberate cheer. "Maybe we can read a bit tonight."

"After dinner, maybe," Coulson agreed.

What followed was another surreal experience of watching Coulson choose whatever he wanted for dinner, regardless of nutritional value or anything Clint knew of his adult tastes. And dessert. A lot of dessert. More dessert than really should have fit in a four-year-old's stomach. Clint could neither confirm nor deny that he assisted in dispatching some of the desserts.

They got ready for bed and settled on the mattress, half-propped against the wall on pillows. Coulson opened one of his paperbacks to his bookmark and Clint took out his StarkPad to check for anything he had missed during the day. The _fftttpppp_ sound of of a large book snapping closed had Clint focusing his peripheral vision on Coulson's novel. Coulson's lips firmed in determination and he re-opened the book, small hands straining to hold almost 200 pages each. The book slipped out of his hands.

Coulson's eyebrows drew down, and Clint knew _that_ look. That look said that today was about to get very difficult for someone or something. As Coulson reached for the book again, murder in his young eyes, Clint turned to him, placing one hand on the thick paperback.

"Sir?" he said. "Maybe tomorrow we can look at getting you back your StarkPad. And maybe getting some e-books on it." He took the book and set it gently on Coulson's side of the mattress. "For tonight, though, how about if I read to you?"

Coulson looked from Barton to the discarded novel and back, raising his eyebrows.

Clint rolled until he could reach the book they'd "liberated" from the day care, and then rolled fluidly back to a seated position. "If you sit on my lap, you'll be able to see the pictures," he teased gently.

Coulson huffed a tiny laugh and shook his head but scooted into Clint's lap anyway. "I could read it myself," he grumbled.

"Of course you could, sir. But being read to is a lot of the fun, isn't it?" He wrapped his arms outside of Coulson's and opened the book across Coulson's knees. "Besides, I have it on good authority that I need to practice my acting skills." He pushed the pillow slightly further up behind his back. "'Oh, good, it's you'," he read. "'Listen, it's getting late, and I need to brush my teeth'..."


	8. Chapter 8

**Note:** This is the chapter that earns the "implied past child abuse" tag. If you're worried that you might be triggered, please see the notes at the end of the chapter. (See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Those first few days pretty much set the pace for Clint's time as Coulson's "caretaker," a term Clint really couldn't take seriously with regard to Coulson. They had breakfast, most days with Natasha, some days with more members of the Avengers team. Mornings were spent in some sort of physical training for Clint with Coulson exercising for part of the time and simply hanging out for the rest. There was almost always an hour or so of occupational therapy with Nancy followed by lunch.

It wasn't enough, though, to just throw about an hour of being a kid at Coulson every day and hope against hope that it was sufficient. If there was a chance that he was going to stay this way, that _these_ were the formative days and months for his neural wiring (and, yeah, Clint had been doing some child development reading, too; sue him), he needed to be a kid _all_ the time. And lockdown at SHIELD HQ was just not conducive to that process.

Some afternoons they were able to drop in on the day care for some extended "kid therapy" time, but sometimes Clint needed to burn off some energy at the shooting range. After dinner, Coulson usually showered — and who knew that pre-bed bathing was such a kid thing? It made sense, though, because after a day, even inside at SHIELD HQ, Coulson was always a bit sticky. Then they read together, sometimes with Clint reading to Coulson, and went to sleep.

Sometimes other members of the team dropped by, if the Avengers weren't called out, and Clint might have a hour or two to himself, if he chose to take it. Usually that translated into extra range time, or sometimes sparring with Natasha, if she was on-base but not with Coulson. After about a week, though, his frustration with the situation got the better of him, and he sought Fury out in his office.

"Sir," he called, tapping lightly on the door as he opened it.

Director Fury looked up from his desk and glared at the distraction. "Agent Barton, I trust you have a good reason for barging into my office?"

"Sir," Clint acknowledged. "It's about Agent Coulson."

Fury's gaze sharpened. "What about him, Barton?"

Clint sat, uninvited, as he tried to put his words together. After a moment, he shook his head and decided to just bull his way through. "This isn't working, sir."

"Explain," Fury demanded.

"Sir, he's showing no signs of reverting to adult form, and our intel from Sir Senescence is getting us nowhere." Clint leaned forward, spreading his hands as if to urge Fury to understand. "So basically, one of two things is happening here. Either we have a child incarcerated, for no crime, or we have Agent Coulson incarcerated, for doing his job."

Fury's expression grew progressively darker, but Clint continued undeterred. "Agent Coulson deserves better, sir. If nothing else, you could be making use of some of the information he's acquired over the years.

"And if Phil Coulson is a child, growing into an adult, he can't do that here!" He thumped his palm on Fury's desk emphatically. "SHIELD has no right to... to prevent him from developing as a human being!"

"You want to re-think your tone, here, Agent?" Fury growled. "SHIELD is doing what we can for him. He has his therapy every day, just as the doctor mandated."

"Are you joking, sir? Dr. Martinez objected _strongly_ to Coulson being confined to HQ. Being a kid, growing into an adult, is a 24-hour-a-day job, and Coulson gets about an hour of kid time a day!"

"Don't you shout at me, Agent Barton!" Fury leaned forward menacingly, giving the impression that it was only the presence of the desk that prevented him from lunging forward to bury his teeth in Clint's throat. "Phil Coulson is one of my oldest friends, but I have larger responsibilities than just one man. SHIELD does not have infinite resources, and our priority is protecting the world from larger threats, not hiring nannies for our employees."

"Can't you let him be a child somewhere else, then, sir?" Clint recognized that he was close to pleading, but he desperately wanted Fury to understand.

Fury deflated somewhat, and rubbed a hand across the creases between his brows. "Barton, I just can't. He's got a brain stuffed full of Level 7 clearance information and no inhibitions to prevent him from sharing it. Hydra could have our personnel roster for a lollipop at this point."

Clint disagreed, having been a child who had kept secrets, from his mother, from the schools, from his brother. With appropriate motivation, a child could be more close-lipped than adults might believe. But Fury was already moving on.

"And Coulson is still a high-value target. If he was out from under SHIELD's protection, it would be open season on him, no matter his age. And he can't exactly protect himself at the moment." Fury sighed deeply. "I'm sorry, Barton. You can't know how sorry. But this is the best we can do right now."

Clint knew, intellectually, that the calm and acceptance of his situation that Coulson was demonstrating was learned behavior. Coulson _had_ actually been a child the first time around, and had probably had his share of tantrums and screaming fits. But when Coulson stubbornly insisted on doing things _his_ way, nine times out of ten Clint didn't see "spoiled child" but "experienced handler* (*currently smaller than standard size)" , and Clint was inclined to go along with him.

That tenth time, though... That tenth time was probably going to have Clint waking up in cold sweats for a while to come.

Clint hadn't slept well the night before. That wasn't an excuse. That wasn't even a reason. It was just a ... thing. Just another fact to add to the analysis. And he hadn't been spending nearly the amount of time at the gym or at the range that he was used to. So, yeah, maybe he had some extra energy to burn off, or maybe he was strung a little tight, but that was no excuse.

And, OK, he and Coulson had been joined at the hip for going on two weeks. The other Avengers relieved him for short breaks, or sometimes Hill did, or sometimes Fury, but that was the exception, not the rule. Coulson still had no security clearance to speak of, so Fury and Hill always had to come to him, and the tiny room Coulson had been allotted got pretty cramped with any two of those personalities crammed into it. It was the most concentrated time Clint had spent with Coulson since a tiny safe house in Bogota where the enforced togetherness, constant fog, and torrential rain had conspired to reduce visibility to _nada_ and give Clint a monumental case of cabin fever.

Which, again, not an excuse, not an acceptable reason, but it hadn't stabbed like a knife to his chest when he'd snapped at Coulson-the-adult to get off his case and _stop breathing all his air_ and stormed away from him (even if it could only be to the tiny bathroom).

When, on the twelfth day of his confinement at SHIELD, four-year-old Phil was unable or unwilling to Just. Get. Your Teeth. Brushed. and fumbled with the toothpaste for like the 80th time and lost the cap and spread toothpaste on the sink and just Took. So. Long Clint felt his hands clenching involuntarily. The desire to just _make it work_ rose up like carbonation in a shaken two-liter bottle, along with the strongest urge to just _knock the problem out of the way_.

He felt the snarl forming on his face, the words of mockery bubbling up from the back of his mind, seeking an outlet. He had a moment of dissociation, watching his behavior from just over his shoulder, and a moment of clarity when he thought, _You are seriously out of control, man_. His vision fuzzed out at the edges and the sound of the running water was muffled. He loomed up over Coulson, fists cocked, and shouted, "What is _wrong_ with you? Why can't you just _brush your teeth_ like a normal–" He got that far before the sight of his face in the mirror, contorted so like his father's had always been, stopped him like all the air had been sucked out of the room.

Phil just looked up at him, toothbrush frozen half out of his mouth, blue eyes wide and starting to well with tears.

Clint dropped to a crouch, putting his eyes level with Phil's. "Coulson. Phil," he choked out. "I'm so _sorry_. I wouldn't..." But the imprints where his nails had dug into his palms was clear. He would. He might. He _would_.

_Mayday, mayday_, Clint thought, fleeing the room.

He closed the door to Phil's quarters and leaned against it, waiting for the call to connect. "Tasha?" His voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Natasha? I need..."

"Clint, what's wrong?" Her low voice was tight with concern. "Is Coulson OK?"

"He's not hurt, but I..." His eyes burned. He swallowed against the dryness of his throat and thumped his head back on the door. "I lost it, Tasha. I just completely lost it. It was nothing, but I just got so _mad_ and suddenly I was just towering over him with _that face_..."

And Natasha, bless her, understood, the result of long, dark nights and darker secrets. When it came to anger, there was only one face that Clint truly feared. "Mой Малыш," she said gently, "what do you need?"

"I don't know who I— who he might need." He laughed humorlessly. "Send everyone. Avengers assemble, Tasha."

He hung up the phone and had to resist the desire to vomit. The foulness he wanted to purge out of himself wasn't in his stomach; it was in his mind, his memories, his thoughts, his psyche — his _soul_, he sometimes feared — making him a completely defective human being.

He didn't even know what he would do when the team arrived. He didn't think he could stomach Cap's unshakable confidence that Clint was a good man, and that _of course_ he wouldn't hurt a child, in the face of Clint's own concerns to the contrary.

He didn't think he could take Bruce's quiet empathy for a man with a temper, when Clint had so much less provocation or excuse for his behavior.

Because the thing was, there was this huge disconnect. Like, if he said that he was worried about losing his temper, it would be pooh-pooh'd away. There would be well-meaning comments of "There, there, you're worrying for nothing. _You_ would never do that. You are a _good_ person." They wouldn't understand that each reassurance was like salt on the open wound of his conscience.

Then on the other side would be the grave murmurs that "shouting at a child is just the same as hitting, really," because, yeah, he really needed to be convinced that he hadn't won anything, hadn't succeeded in anything by _preventing_ himself from hitting? Great, he'd already failed, so, really, could he sink any lower?

Two distinct sets of footfalls approached, taking him by surprise. He hadn't thought Cap and Natasha were in SHIELD HQ this early in the morning. Natasha reached up to grab him by the shoulders, staring narrowly into his eyes. "Clint," she said, flexing her fingers almost to the point of pain. "We will fix this. It will be all right."

He leaned his head down into hers, trying to absorb her confidence. "Just..." He swallowed thickly. "Just make sure he's OK, Tasha?"

She released his shoulders and cuffed him lightly on the back of his head. He huffed a slightly hysterical laugh and stepped away from the door to let her enter. He collapsed back against it when she shut it behind her and braced for Captain America's inevitable unintentional criticism.

Clint could feel Rogers' gaze on him even as he focused sightlessly at the institutional flooring under his feet. After a moment, Steve shifted and said, "Can we sit, do you think?"

Clint felt his mouth twist up in a parody of a smile and he let himself slide down the door to a seated position. He crossed his legs, propped his elbows on his knees, and dropped his forehead into his hands. He sensed more than heard Steve take a seat beside him.

"Y'know I, uh," Steve began, "I guess I had the most, um, normal... upbringing of all the Avengers." Clint felt him shrug. "I mean, you could make a case for Stark..." And that brought Clint's head up to stare at his team leader disbelievingly. Steve held up a temporizing hand. "I mean, two parents, and all. But then there's the engineering prodigy thing, and Howard being distracted with..." He made a vague, waving hand-gesture.

"But, he had a home, you know?" Steve continued. "Anyway, not really the point. The point is more..." He sighed.

"My mother was... well, she was a saint," Steve said. "Lost her husband in The War — uh, World War I — worked like a Trojan to provide for herself and her constantly ailing son. I wasn't always..." Steve smiled self-deprecatingly. "I was a challenge.

"She did her best, and she was great. Sometimes, though, sometimes it was all just too much. Sometimes something would go wrong and she would just," he shrugged, "fly off the handle. She would yell for maybe a couple of minutes. It wasn't really anything I'd done. I had just been the last thing on a long list of things that day, I guess.

"What I'm trying to say is," he turned and looked directly at Clint, who glanced up at his intent blue gaze before he had to look away. "She didn't love me any less. She was just a human being. And, Clint." He grasped Clint's forearm to make sure he had his complete attention. "I didn't love her any less, either. And I even turned out pretty OK," he said wryly.

Clint was quiet when Steve finished, but after a moment said simply, "Thanks, Cap." And, yeah, this was probably why Coulson had idolized this man from a young age. Seriously, how was this guy even real?

The knock on the door behind thrummed through Clint's back, making him jump. Coulson opened the door and peered out at Clint, all enormous blue eyes and trepidation.

"Clint, are you OK?" he asked.

Clint wished for a moment he could laugh, he really did. "I should be asking you that, sir."

Natasha's black-clad arm appeared behind Coulson, prodding him forward, and he took two quick steps and threw himself into Clint's lap. Clint's arms closed around him reflexively, holding him close and soaking in the warm child-smell. "I'm sorry," he said, rocking Coulson slightly. "I am so, so sorry."

"I'm OK, I'm fine," Coulson said, "but I was worried about you." And could Clint feel any lower? Because that was classic abused child behavior, right there: concern for the scary adult. Tasha didn't seem worried, though, because she gave Steve a significant nod and they both took off together.

"Sir, you shouldn't have to be worried about me. I'm supposed to be the adult, and—"

Coulson cut him off. "Barton, I'm an adult, too, in case you'd forgotten. You startled me, that's all. You know how this kid-body reacts to being surprised. It's all freeze, followed by fight-or-flight response. You were gone before I could even say anything or do anything..."

"I couldn't stick around in case _I_ did something," Clint said shakily.

"Barton, I know you," Coulson said intently. "I know you have a temper. And issues, and worries, and history. And, yes, maybe you should start working through some of them, and maybe now when you seem to be stuck at HQ would be a good time to start."

Clint's eyes felt hot and his nose was beginning to prickle in a way that meant kleenex was soon going to be a necessity. "Sir," he said to Coulson's hair, "is it OK if we just cancel today and go back to quarters?"

"That sounds good to me, Barton."

They retired to Coulson's mattress and Clint pulled Coulson's back in to his own belly, wrapping his arms over Coulson's so that the whole of their arms were pressed skin-to-skin. They spent the next several hours snuggled together on Coulson's mattress, trying to comfort each other and soak up some oxytocin as Nancy had recommended.

**End Notes:** Clint has been implying that his father was abusive, and that he fears he will be the same. In this chapter, Clint loses his temper with Phil and shouts, fists his hands, and looms over Phil, and then immediately removes himself from the situation.


	9. Chapter 9

Clint would've liked a few more days to shore up their friendship after that horrible morning. Instead, he was only allowed to remain at SHIELD headquarters for another day before an assignment came up that "required" his specific skill set. It was amazing how indispensable he'd suddenly become when all he wanted to do was stay close to base. After two days in the field and another flying back, he desperately wanted a meal, a shower, a nap, and an update on Coulson, not necessarily in that order.

In fact, not at all in that order. Fury had assured him before he was sent out that the rest of the team would be keeping close tabs on Coulson, but he had worried anyway. He checked in with JARVIS as he was waiting for transport back to SHIELD HQ. Fortunately, nothing had changed.

Unfortunately, nothing had changed. Coulson was still a child and had shown no signs of aging. His quarters were still only a half-step up from a holding cell, and SHIELD had shown no signs of upgrading them. The Avengers had been assembled to address a threat in Florida, and Clint couldn't find any evidence that anyone else had visited Coulson during that time. Coulson still hadn't been allowed a phone. Or outdoor privileges. And was allotted only a minimum of gym time. "You wouldn't keep a _dog_ confined like that," he groused to JARVIS. "Even a dog at a shelter gets yard time."

"_I believe you are correct, sir_," JARVIS responded. "_And this state of affairs does not meet with your approval, Agent Barton_?"

Was he really going to do this? Clint scrubbed his hands over his face. "I know this is the best solution, but..." He tipped his face up, eyes closed. "JARVIS, how on earth did it happen that _I_ am the best surrogate parent for Coulson?"

Staying at SHIELD any longer was just not a viable option. It was no environment for a kid to grow up in. Natasha could make Phil disappear, but her... upbringing — he couldn't say childhood, because it was never that — in the Red Room meant that she had even less idea of how to be a child or a parent than Clint did. Stark could maybe protect him in plain sight in Avengers Tower, but could Clint really trust a man who couldn't remember to eat or sleep to take care of a growing child? Steve couldn't disappear Coulson or protect him with ridiculous wealth like Tony could; and he, Thor, and Bruce had enough trouble navigating 21st century Earth without worrying about a child, too.

What really tipped the scales for Clint, though, was when JARVIS revealed that Coulson had been banned from the SHIELD day care, something about insurance and hazard pay and child-to-caretaker ratio and Clint _really didn't care_ because what it all came down to was that Coulson had even less time to be a kid than he'd had before, and it was getting worse, not better.

"I hoped, I really hoped that they could get it right," he said, mostly to himself. Clint rolled his shoulders to try to release the tension in them, and then nodded decisively. "I'll speak to Natasha. It may be time for me to take a vacation," he said, using the set phrase he and JARVIS had previously agreed upon.

"_Very good, sir_," JARVIS responded immediately. "_I shall begin making arrangements for your stay in warmer climes_." Files on a secure server that JARVIS had hidden from himself became available, and he began to implement Clint's escape protocols.

"JARVIS, I'm terrified." He shook his head again and ran his hands through his hair. "I'm snappish, impatient, short-tempered... What if..." He swallowed, throat so dry it clicked. "What if I parent like my parents did? What if, when push comes to shove, I..." He gripped his hair tightly. "What if I hurt him?"

"_Agent Barton, if I may?_" JARVIS put in delicately. "_You are perhaps being much more deliberate about filling a parenting role than many who are surprised by their children. I anticipate that your awareness of any character flaws will help you to avoid inflicting them on Agent Coulson_.

"_And_..." JARVIS hesitated, and Clint took a moment to appreciate the programming that let JARVIS communicate "gathering his thoughts" with a minute pause. "_I believe many incidents of abuse or neglect occur when the caretaker is overtired or stressed. Because you intend to undertake Agent Coulson's care by yourself, may I suggest, if it is agreeable to you, that I might, in a small way... Come with you?_"

See, here's how it works. It takes about a week of dropped hints, and a few days of outright pleading, but eventually Coulson is allowed out of SHIELD on a field trip. Really, it's the appeal to Fury — complete with the pleading puppy eyes (Fury still hasn't built up an immunity) — for Chicago-style deep-dish that wins the day. Clint's time in the field (translation: not bodyguarding Coulson) means that SHIELD doesn't require him to (translation: won't let him) accompany Coulson outside. Fury may have somehow gotten the idea that Clint wouldn't want Coulson to go back to his SHIELD cell. Fury would be right about that.

So Clint is logged in to the archery range while Coulson is sitting in a little hole-in-the-wall pizza place with only one overt babysitter — an easily-cowed junior who for some reason thinks that just because Coulson is in a 40-pound package he cannot _end_ him — and several more experienced agents surveilling the restaurant and several others on the streets outside.

The server brings Coulson his slices and he falls on the food like he hasn't eaten in a week, or like he hasn't had real pizza in months, or like he expects it to be taken away at any moment. Two of those appearances are actual fact.

Coulson is just starting his second slice when a small girl at a table behind him erupts into a screaming tantrum. Her blond pigtails fly as she flings her head about in anger, and her face turns a shade of red that clashes hideously with her fluffy pink dress. Her father bends his head close to talk with her as she continues to screech incoherently.

The disturbance causes Coulson to glance over his shoulder with rounded eyes, but then he turns back to his food with a shrug. The junior agent's expression is a combination of "there but for the grace of God" and terror that "his" preschooler might explode into similar behavior later. "Somebody's tired," he says, with a nervous smile, as he watches the father pull the screaming child toward the bathrooms.

"Happens," Coulson says, and dives once more into his pizza.

When he has finished, he wipes his mouth with his paper napkin (which until now has been properly on his lap) and tells the junior agent, "I need to use the bathroom." Before the SHIELD-issue babysitter can do more than begin to rise, Coulson is spearing him with his patented "Really?" look, which really should not work so well on a four-year-old's face.

He stands as the junior agent settles back down in his seat, places his napkin politely on his chair, and walks to the restroom. A few minutes later the father walks past with his little girl, now apparently sleeping, cradled on his shoulder. Her head is snuggled into his neck, and she's all pink ruffles and blonde braids. He drops a few bills on their table and the child doesn't even stir as he opens the door and walks out.

The agent finishes his meal in peace and then checks his watch. Five minutes have passed. An agent with more experience would never have let the time go beyond three. An agent with knowledge of _Coulson_ would never have let him out of his sight in the first place. By the time he checks the restroom and finds the open window, then shamefacedly calls in backup to start searching the alleys, Coulson has been in the wind for 15 minutes.

It is far more than he needs. Even if he had been alone.

In reality, it went much more like this:

Clint listened to the little girl scream for almost a minute before he nodded in satisfaction. He knelt down to meet her eyes and said, "That's really good. Now, do you think you can do that tomorrow with your Daddy when it's time?"

"Sure, Dr. Francis," she replied, beaming a cherubic smile like she hadn't been imitating a Nazgul moments earlier.

"Mr. Stillen," he said, rising to take her father's hand, "I can't thank you and your daughter enough for assisting us with our observation and perception project at the last minute."

"It's my pleasure, Dr. Francis," the man returned, shaking his hand.

"With the venue and the observers and all the other researchers all in place, it would have been quite a setback if we had to postpone this exercise." He reached for a clipboard and thumbed through the pages briefly before shuffling one to the top. "I'll need your signature here, where it says you consent to the experiment, and here again if you consent to being filmed."

When the man had signed, Clint presented him with a sheet with columns for names and signatures and checkmarks for "paid." Mr. Stillen filled in his information on line 11. "And you would prefer the cash stipend instead of the gift card?" At his nod, Clint continued, "And your daughter? Would she like the Colombia Junior Psychology Researcher t-shirt, or the cash stipend?"

So when Haley Stillen had a screaming meltdown in the middle of Lombardi's Pizza, resulting in her father dragging her to the restroom, "Dr. Francis" was waiting for them near the telephones with their stipends for study participation and ushered them out the rear of the building with promises to email them the study's results. When Phil Coulson, aged approximately four, arrived in the restroom a few minutes later, Clint Barton quickly changed him into a pink ruffled dress with white tights and a wig with blonde braids, and then opened the window for misdirection.

Moments later a "father" carried his exhausted "daughter" out the front door of the restaurant and into a waiting car.

"We've got them, sir." The technician sounded relieved.

"Talk to me," Fury snapped.

It had taken SHIELD the better part of an hour to retrace their agents' steps, but they had found that Phil Coulson had not shimmied his 3-foot-2 frame up a a featureless bathroom wall, forced open a window, and then dropped six feet to an alley below before taking off on size 9 feet. Nor had he waltzed through the back of the restaurant and onto a crowded New York City street. No, he had been carried out under the watchful gazes of no fewer than six SHIELD agents (who would be hearing a thing or two from Director Fury about situational awareness in the near future, make no mistake). The fact that no one had had eyes on Barton during that time was a further oversight that had several agents reaching for their TUMS bottles.

Further time had been lost scouring facial recognition software and closed-circuit TV and security footage for any hints of the pair's whereabouts. The face trace programs balked at scanning for Barton's face, and the video recordings of child-Phil were strangely degraded. They had to regress his adult-face to approximate the child version, and Fury was deeply suspicious of the results generated by the malfunctioning software.

"CCTV has a record of a pair matching the most recent description travelling to JFK and boarding a flight for ... Phnom Penh."

"How certain are we that they're on that flight?"

"We've got agents almost to the gate, sir. Cameras record that they boarded, but we'll get gate personnel to confirm."

"I want a line to that aircraft. I want to confirm that our targets are on it before any more time gets away from us. Where's it landing?"

"First stop London, sir, in another four hours."

"Confirm they're on that plane. Have it met in London. Let's tidy this up, people. This has not been SHIELD's finest hour."

Long before SHIELD could confirm absolutely that the father and daughter pair who had won tickets to Phnom Penh were not in fact Agent Barton and Agent Coulson, Agent Clint Barton helped a very sleepy Agent Phil Coulson out of his carseat and into an unassuming house in eastern Pennsylvania. They each carried in a small bag, and Coulson helped Clint sweep the house for bugs.

Clint cooked them a simple meal out of the pantry. "So, sir," he asked, as they sat down for dinner. "How would you like to start school next week? Maybe make being a kid your day job?" They discussed the options over dinner until it was time for Coulson to shower and wash off the day's accumulation of kid-stickiness and get ready for bed.

In theory, Coulson had a room of his own and an appropriately low bed. As it happened, though, after a long day of driving and eluding SHIELD, Phil curled up in the bed next to Clint. Clint wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled out a book. "So, I thought we could start a new book, kind of in honor of our new lives?"

Coulson nodded, and his eyes rounded when he saw the cover. "I loved this story when I was a kid." He paused and laughed at himself. "The first time."

"I've never read it, sir. Hope it's as good as you remember." He settled Phil closer to his side and opened the book. His eyes rounded. "Are they kidding with this? This is a kid's book?"

Phil peered owlishly over the edge of the book, and then laughed again. His childish laugh thrummed through Clint's ribs. "I'd forgotten that."

Clint squeezed Phil tight for a moment and then cleared his throat and began to read. "Where's papa going with that ax?"

**End Notes:**

Find me on Tumblr at Selori.

Inspired by this art by Rascal Paradyne.


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